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Dessert

Syllabubs, Large

A lemon custard dessert made with powdered sugar, lemon juice, rind, Madeira, sweet wine, cinnamon, ratafia, cream, served over macaroons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Syllabubs, Large

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syllabub

  1. In a bowl, combine the powdered sugar and lemon juice.

  2. Add the grated lemon rind, Madeira, sweet wine, powdered cinnamon, and ratafia. Stir until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Whisk in the cream until frothy.

Serve

  1. Layer macaroons in the bottom of a dish and pile the froth on top.

  2. Refrigerate for a couple of days before serving.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Wine + cinnamontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Powdered sugar
Sweetens the mixture and dissolves into the lemon juice and wine.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and balances the wine.
Cream
Whisked into a light froth that forms the body of the dessert.
Madeira
Adds fortified wine depth and aroma to the base.
Sweet wine
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour to the base.

The step that matters

Whisk in the cream until frothy. Cream must be whisked just to soft peaks. Overwhipping turns it grainy or buttery, and the acidic wine base can curdle or thicken unevenly if the cream is poured in too fast or too hard.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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