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Dessert

A Farm-house Syllabub

A dessert made with beer, cider, nutmeg, sugar, milk, and currants simmered in wine or beer.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and currant work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 500 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

A Farm-house Syllabub

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the strong beer and cider in a bowl.

  2. Add nutmeg and sugar to taste.

  3. After mixing, let the mixture stand for 1 hour.

  4. Top with currants that have been simmered in a little white wine or strong beer.

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. Cider + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together500 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Beer + cidertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Beer + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together298 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Strong beer
Adds bitterness, malty aroma and body to the drink.
Cider
Adds acidity and fruity flavour that balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the beer and cider.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beer, cider, sugar, milk, currant):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beer, cider, sugar, milk, currant. 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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