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Dessert

Fine Whisked or Whipped Syllabub

A frothy dessert made from cream, wine, citrus, brandy, and sugar, topped with nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fine Whisked or Whipped Syllabub

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syllabub

  1. Combine the cream, mountain wine, lemon juice, orange juice, brandy, orange-flower water, and powdered sugar in a large bowl.

  2. Whisk or whip the mixture until frothy.

  3. As the froth rises, spoon it off and place it on an inverted sieve to drain.

  4. If the froth does not rise well, add the egg whites and continue whipping.

Serve

  1. Once whipped, spoon some liquid into syllabub glasses, grate a little nutmeg on top, and fill with froth.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Wine + orangetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Whipped into froth, its fat and air bubbles form the light, creamy body of the dish.
Mountain wine
Adds acidity and flavour to the liquid base that sits beneath the froth.
Lemon juice
Acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps the cream thicken as it is whipped.
Brandy
Contributes strong aroma and alcohol flavour to the liquid base.
Egg whites
Their proteins trap air and stabilise the froth when the cream does not rise well.

The step that matters

Spooning off the froth as it rises. Froth that is left too long collapses back into liquid, so it should be spooned off as it forms and drained on an inverted sieve so the thick foam separates from the thin liquid.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raspberryfits about as well
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Apricotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, wine, lemon, brandy, sugar, egg. 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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Whipped 15Staffordshire 7Lemon 6Birthday 3 See all 113 →

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