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Dessert

A Birthday Syllabub

A sweet, curd-like dessert made with sugar, lemon juice, wine, brandy, nutmeg, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Port wine and sherry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 132 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

A Birthday Syllabub

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a large bowl, combine the sugar and lemon juice, stirring well.

  2. Add the port wine, sherry, and brandy to the mixture.

  3. Grate in the nutmeg.

  4. Milk the bowl full with fresh milk.

Serve

  1. To serve, place a portion of the curd in each glass, fill with whey, and top with a little rich cream.

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. Port wine + sherrytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Sherry + brandytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Port wine + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Sherry + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Sweetens the drink and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that helps curdle the milk into curd and whey.
Milk
Forms the curd and whey when acidic wine and lemon juice are added.
Port wine
Adds body, sweetness and deep flavour to the mixture.
Sherry
Adds dry, nutty flavour and additional alcohol to the mixture.

The step that matters

Milk the bowl full with fresh milk. Milk must be poured in without stirring so the acidic mixture can curdle into distinct curd floating over clear whey. Stirring breaks up the curds and prevents separation.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, port wine, sherry, brandy, nutmeg, milk. 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.

More syllabub recipes

Whipped 15Staffordshire 7Lemon 6Birthday 3 See all 113 →

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