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Drink

Everlasting Syllabubs

A sweet drink made from thick cream, Rhenish wine, sugar, lemon, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Everlasting Syllabubs

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large bowl, combine the thick cream, Rhenish wine, sack, and beaten loaf sugar.

  2. Grate the yellow rind of the lemons and add it to the mixture.

  3. Squeeze the juice of the lemons into the wine and then add it to the cream mixture. Beat everything together well with a spoon.

  4. Serve in glasses.

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

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

  2. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar 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

Thick cream
Forms the rich, airy body of the syllabub as it is beaten.
Rhenish wine
Provides the liquid base and its flavour, thinning the cream.
Lemons
Their juice adds acidity and their rind adds aroma.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the mixture and balances the acidity of the lemon.
Sack
Adds alcohol and fortified-wine flavour to the mixture.

The step that matters

Beat everything together well with a spoon. Thorough beating combines the acidic wine and lemon juice into the cream so it thickens evenly rather than curdling in patches or staying runny. Beating incorporates air, giving the light body the dish depends on.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, wine, 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

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

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