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Dessert

Everlasting Syllabubs

A chilled dessert made with cream, wine, sherry, lemon zest, sugar, lemon juice, water, cream, and rennet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Everlasting Syllabubs

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine 3 quarts thick cream, 1 quart Rhenish wine, and ½ pint sack in a large bowl.

  2. Beat 2 pounds loaf sugar until well sifted, then add to the mixture.

  3. Grate yellow rind of 6 lemons and add to the mixture.

  4. Squeeze juice from 6 lemons into wine, then add to the cream mixture.

  5. Beat everything together well with a spoon, then fill glasses.

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

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

  2. Sugar + junkettop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together82 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Cream + junkettop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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

Thick cream
Forms the rich, thick body that holds the whipped structure of the dessert.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the mixture and helps stabilise the cream as it is beaten.
Rhenish wine
Adds liquid and wine flavour, with its acidity balancing the richness of the cream.
Lemons
Their juice adds acidity and their rind adds aromatic citrus oil.

The step that matters

Beat everything together well with a spoon. The acid from the lemon juice and wine can thicken cream as it is mixed, so the mixture should be beaten thoroughly and evenly to reach a uniform, smooth texture before it is poured into glasses.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, wine, sherry, sugar, junket. 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 syllabubs recipes

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