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Dessert

Solid Syllabub

A chilled dessert made with milk, wine, lemon, sugar, cream, egg whites, and fortified wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and port wine share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 55 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Solid Syllabub

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine the mountain (or milk), white wine, grated lemon peel, lemon juice, and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Add this mixture to the rich cream and whisk for 1 hour.

  3. Pour into glasses and refrigerate; it will keep for a week in cold weather.

Make the froth and serve

  1. In another bowl, mix the brandy, lemon juice, grated lemon peel, and sugar.

  2. Stir this into the thick cream and add the beaten egg whites.

  3. Whisk for 1 hour and strain the froth through a sieve.

  4. Pour a little port and sweet wine into glasses and top with the froth.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. White wine + port winetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Brandy + port winetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. White wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together620 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rich cream
Provides fat and body, giving the syllabub its rich, thick texture.
Thick cream
Whisks into a stable foam and adds richness to the froth.
Whites of 6 eggs
Whipped into foam, adding lightness and helping the froth hold its shape.
White wine
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and cream.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and balances the acidity of the lemon and wine.

The step that matters

Whisk for 1 hour and strain the froth. Whisking incorporates air into the cream and egg whites to form a foam. Straining removes loose bits so the froth sits cleanly on the wine. Under-whisking leaves the foam unstable.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, white wine, sugar, cream, brandy, egg, port wine):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, white wine, sugar, cream, brandy, egg, port wine. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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