Skip to main content
Dessert

To Make Lemon Syllabubs

A chilled lemon custard dessert made with cream, wine, sugar, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: White wine and sherry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 307 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

To Make Lemon Syllabubs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syllabub

  1. Combine cream, sugar, lemon juice, white wine, and sack in a deep pot.

  2. Whisk the mixture for 30 minutes.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into glasses and refrigerate overnight.

  2. Let the glasses stand for 2–3 days before serving.

  3. Keep the dessert refrigerated for up to a week if needed.

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 + sherrytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Cream + white winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,760 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Provides the rich fat and body that gives the syllabub its thick, creamy texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps thicken the cream as it sets.
Sugar
Sweetens the dessert and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
White wine
Adds liquid and acidity, contributing flavour and loosening the cream mixture.
Sack
Adds fortified wine flavour and alcohol, deepening the aroma of the dessert.

The step that matters

Whisking the mixture. Whisking incorporates air and the acid from the lemon juice and wine works with the cream to thicken it. Whisk too little and the mixture stays runny; too long and it can turn grainy or split.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, white wine, sherry, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, white wine, sherry, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes