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Dessert

Lemon Syllabubs

A chilled lemon dessert made with sugar, cream, white wine, and lemon zest and juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 Syllabubs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the outer rinds of the lemons into the sugar to extract the essence.

  2. Combine the sugar with the cream and white wine.

  3. Squeeze in the juice of both lemons and let the mixture stand for 2 hours.

Froth and serve

  1. Use a chocolate mill to froth the mixture, removing the froth with a spoon as it rises.

  2. Drain the froth on a hair sieve, then fill glasses with the remaining mixture and top with the froth.

  3. Let the glasses stand overnight 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 + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Cream + white winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,760 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

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

  5. Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and draws out the lemon oils from the rind.
Lemons
Provide acidity and aroma from the juice and rind oils.
Cream
Provides fat and body, and forms the light froth on top.
White wine
Adds liquid and acidity that balance the sweetness of the cream.

The step that matters

Removing the froth as it rises. Skim the froth off as it forms, before it collapses back into the liquid. Cream foam is held up by trapped air and fat, so removing it promptly keeps the topping light and stable for the glasses.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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