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Dessert

Common Syllabub

A chilled dessert made from currant juice, wine, nutmeg, lemon peel, sugar, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Common Syllabub

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syllabub

  1. In a china bowl, combine currant juice, port or white wine, grated nutmeg, lemon peel, and sugar.

  2. Mix well until the sugar dissolves.

  3. Add 3 to 4 pints of milk and stir gently.

Chill and serve

  1. Chill and serve cold.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Currant + white winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the bulk of the drink, providing body and a creamy, mellow texture.
Port or white wine
Adds acidity and flavour, and its acid helps thicken the milk into a curd-like texture.
Currant juice
Adds tart fruit flavour and acidity to balance the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink and balances the tartness of the juice and wine.

The step that matters

Add the milk gently. Stirring the milk vigorously can break it into curds or thin it unevenly. Gentle stirring keeps the mixture smooth and evenly flavoured.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, nutmeg, lemon, sugar, milk. 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

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