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Dessert

Syllabubs

A chilled dessert made from cream, wine, sugar, lemon peel, and froth, served in glasses with alternating layers of red and white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and red wine share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 97 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Syllabubs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the froth

  1. Whisk together the cream, white wine, sugar, and lemon peel until frothy.

  2. Remove the froth with a skimmer and drain it on the back of a sieve.

Assemble and serve

  1. Fill glasses halfway with alternating layers of red and white wine.

  2. Sweeten the wine and top with the froth.

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. White wine + red winetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  3. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

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

  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

Cream
Whisked into a foam that sits on top of the wine as a light, rich layer.
White wine
Adds acidity and wine flavor that cuts through the richness of the cream.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the acidity of the wines.
Lemon peel
Adds citrus aroma that brightens the cream and wine.
Red wine
Adds its own flavor and acidity in the layers beneath the froth.

The step that matters

Removing the froth. Skim the froth off as it forms, then let it drain. Cream foam collapses over time, and excess liquid would dilute the wine layers and make the top soggy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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