Flummery

Description

Ingredients

• one large cupful oatmeal (or flummery meal)


• one quart cold water


• half a cupful buttermilk

Method

• Steep the oatmeal in the cold water and buttermilk for three or four days until the mixture is sour.


• Then strain through a very fine sieve, extracting all the liquid from the meal.


• Boil the liquid briskly and stir continuously with a wooden stick or spoon.


• To test its consistency, hold the stick covered with flummery a few inches above the saucepan and if the mixture seems to form a thin ribbon or ‘tail’ as it runs back into the pan, it will have boiled to the required degree.


• Pour the flummery into a dish rinsed beforehand with cold water, and leave to cool.


• Serve in cold milk or with treacle dissolved in hot water.

Llanuwchllyn, Merioneth.

Llymru was served for breakfast or supper, especially during the summer months.

Llangwnadl, Caernarvonshire.

A dish highly recommended for a person suffering from a kidney ailment.

Llanuwchllyn, Merioneth.

The dish known as llymru (flummery) in the counties of north Wales is basically the same dish as the one known as sucan or uwd sucan in south Wales (see sucan recipe). A reference to this variation in names is found in the renowned Morris’ Letters. In a letter to his brother Richard, Lewis Morris writes in 1760, ‘…toccins yw arian cochion yn sir Faesyfed a sucan neu uwd y gelwir llymru yno’ (…copper money is known as 'toccins' in Radnorshire and llymru is called 'sucan' or 'uw'd there).

The stick used to stir the llymru varied slightly in size and form and was known by different names, e.g. myndl in Montgomeryshire, mopran or pren llymru in Caernarfonshire, and 'wtffon' or 'rhwtffon' in Merioneth.

The following couplets or phrases referring to llymru are quoted locally:

‘Llymru lled amrwd

I lenwi bol yn lle bwyd.’

Llangybi, Caernarvonshire

(Raw/crude llymru

To fill the belly in place of food)

‘Llymru llwyd da i ddim

Ond i lenwi bol rhag isho bwyd.’

Parc, Merioneth

(Pale llymru, good for nothing

But to fill the belly and suppress hunger)

‘Cyn llwyted â llymru’

(As pale as llymru)

‘Croen uwd a chreifion llymru.’

Gwerin Eiriau, Caernarvonshire

(Porridge skin and llymru scrapings)