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Dessert

Solid Syllabub

A chilled dessert made from cream, lemon, wine, brandy, sugar, and isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Solid Syllabub

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a bowl, mix the cream and lemon juice well.

  2. Add sweet wine, brandy, and sugar to taste.

  3. In a saucepan, combine isinglass and water with the lemon peel and boil until dissolved.

  4. Pour the dissolved isinglass into the bowl, stirring for 5 minutes.

  5. Strain the mixture through a colander into molds and refrigerate to cool and stiffen.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  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

Heavy cream
Provides the rich fat base that gives the syllabub its body and creamy texture.
Isinglass
Gelatin-like setting agent that firms the cream so it holds its shape when chilled.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the cream and balances the sweetness of the wine and sugar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the lemon juice.

The step that matters

Pour the dissolved isinglass into the bowl, stirring for 5 minutes. The isinglass must be fully dissolved and evenly stirred into the cream so it sets the whole mixture evenly; uneven stirring can leave pockets that fail to stiffen as the dessert chills.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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

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