Welsh Foods

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Flummery

Llanuwchllyn, Gwynedd

Pouring a small quantity into a cast iron saucepan. Mrs Catrin Jones, Bala, Merioneth.

Preparing flummery. Pouring a small quantity into a cast iron saucepan. Mrs Catrin Jones, Bala, 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 uwd 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 Caernarvonshire, and wtffon or rhwtffon in Merioneth.

 

 

            

Cereal and Milk Dishes

The Recipe

You will need

  • one large cupful oatmeal (or flummery meal)
  • one quart cold water
  • half a cupful buttermilk

Method

  1. Steep the oatmeal in the cold water and buttermilk for three or four days until the mixture is sour. 
  2. Then strain through a very fine sieve, extracting all the liquid from the meal. 
  3. Boil the liquid briskly and stir continuously with a wooden stick or spoon. 
  4. 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. 
  5. Pour the flummery into a dish rinsed beforehand with cold water, and leave to cool.
  6. Serve in cold milk or with treacle dissolved in hot water.

Llanuwchllyn, Merioneth.

Comments (4)

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Alice Wilde
11 November 2020, 19:47
This is almost identical to the Irish/Scottish dish Sowans. I have been practising making that because I love oats and need an alternative to toast and breakfast cereal as I'm intolerant to wheat.
Gwenn Selvaggio
26 October 2019, 18:11
Very interesting article. Made me think of my Grandmother.
Mared Wyn McAleavey Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales Staff
15 October 2019, 09:39

Dear Helen

The collection of recipes on this website are from the book Welsh Fare, by Minwel Tibbott, featuring recipes that have been passed down along the generations which Minwel collected for the Museum archive during the 1970s and 1980s.
There are a number of recipe books that have since been published that draw on our archive. If you

email me directly
, I can send you a bibliography.

Many thanks

Mared

Helen Aviv
14 October 2019, 02:38
Do you have a traditional cookbook you recommend?
Something that would be along the lines of what ancient Welsh people ate.