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Dessert

Whip Syllabub

A chilled dessert made with whipped cream, sweet wine, brandy, lemon juice, nutmeg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg 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 ↓

Whip Syllabub

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Whip and mix

  1. In a bowl, whip the cream until soft peaks form.

  2. Mix in the sweet wine, brandy, lemon juice, nutmeg, and sifted sugar.

Fill and top

  1. Fill custard glasses nearly to the top with the mixture.

  2. Top each glass with a spoonful of the whipped cream.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Wine + lemontop 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

Cream
Whipped into a foam that gives the syllabub its light, airy structure.
Sweet wine
Adds liquid and sweetness, flavoring the cream as it is folded in.
Brandy
Adds strong aroma and warmth that balances the sweetness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and cuts the richness of the cream.
Sifted loaf sugar
Sweetens the mixture and dissolves smoothly into the liquid when sifted.

The step that matters

Mixing in the wine and lemon juice. Acidic liquid added to whipped cream can cause it to lose volume, thin, or curdle. Adding the liquid gradually and stirring gently only until combined helps the foam hold its shape.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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