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Dessert

Whipt Syllabub

A frothy dessert made with brandy, lemon juice, cream, egg whites, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and port wine work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 127 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Whipt Syllabub

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Mix the brandy, lemon juice, grated lemon peel, and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Stir this mixture into the thick cream.

Whip the froth

  1. Add the well-beaten egg whites and whisk for an hour.

  2. As the froth rises, place it on a sieve to drain.

Serve

  1. Pour a little port and sweet wine into glasses and fill them 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. Brandy + port winetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Brandy + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

  4. Port wine + winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together128 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Thick cream
Forms the body of the syllabub, giving it richness and a creamy texture.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam that lightens the mixture and holds the froth together.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor that cuts through the richness of the cream.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and brightens the flavor.

The step that matters

Draining the froth on a sieve. Froth that is drained too little leaves liquid pooling in the glass, while over-draining dries it out. Letting the liquid drain gradually lets the foam stand up and keep its shape.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, sugar, cream, egg, port wine, 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.

More syllabub recipes

Whipped 15Staffordshire 7Lemon 6Birthday 3 See all 113 →

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