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Dessert

Very Superior Whipped Syllabubs

A whipped lemon custard made with sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, sherry, brandy, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,209 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Very Superior Whipped Syllabubs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Weigh the sugar and rasp the rinds of the lemons into it.

  2. Pound or roll the mixture to a powder and place it in a bowl.

Make the syllabub

  1. Add the strained lemon juice, sherry, and brandy to the bowl.

  2. Stir until the sugar is dissolved, then add the cream.

  3. Whisk the mixture well and remove the froth as it rises.

Serve

  1. Pour the froth into glasses and refrigerate until 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. Sherry + brandytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Brandy + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Fine sugar
Sweetens the dish and dissolves into the liquid to balance the lemon's acidity.
Fresh cream
Whips into a light foam that forms the body of the syllabub.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavour, and thickens the cream as it reacts.
Sherry
Adds depth and aroma and a little liquid to the mixture.
Brandy
Adds aroma and warmth and contributes to the flavour of the froth.

The step that matters

Whisk the mixture well and remove the froth as it rises. Cream whips into foam as air is incorporated, and the froth can collapse if left too long. Removing it as it rises keeps the light texture and gives a clear liquid base beneath.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sherry, brandy, 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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