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Dessert

Lemon Syllabub

A frothy lemon dessert made with lemon juice, powdered sugar, thick cream, and sherry or raisin wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓

Lemon Syllabub

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Strain the juice of the lemons over the rinds.

  2. Add the powdered sugar and let it sit for 1-2 hours.

Whisk and set

  1. Add the thick cream and sherry or raisin wine, then strain the mixture.

  2. Whisk until well frothed, which takes about 30-40 minutes.

  3. Pour the syllabub into glasses and let it stand for 10-12 hours 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Cream + sherrytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Lemon and sugar 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

Lemons
Provide the acidic juice that gives the syllabub its bright, tart flavour.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the mixture and dissolves easily into the lemon juice.
Thick cream
Provides fat and body, and whisks into a light, frothy texture.
Sherry or raisin wine
Adds alcohol and extra flavour, and helps thin the mixture before whisking.

The step that matters

Whisk until well frothed. Cream must be whipped to trap air in its fat structure; under-whisking leaves a thin liquid, while the acid in the lemon juice can also affect how the cream thickens.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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