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Dessert

Lemon Syllabub

A frothy lemon dessert made with grated lemon rind, sugar, lemon juice, sherry, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓

Lemon Syllabub

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syllabub

  1. Grate the rind of two lemons into a bowl with the sugar.

  2. Pour the juice of five lemons, sherry, and cream into the bowl.

  3. Whisk the mixture well for half an hour.

Chill and serve

  1. Fill glasses with the mixture and let it stand for 12 to 15 hours before serving.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  4. Sherry + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,141 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Cream
Whipped and thickened by the whisking, it gives the syllabub its rich, light body.
Lemon juice
Its acidity cuts the sweetness of the sugar and brightens the flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps balance the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Sherry or sweet wine
Adds alcohol and wine flavour, and its acidity helps the cream thicken.
Lemon rind
Supplies aromatic oils that scent the mixture with lemon flavour.

The step that matters

Whisking the mixture for half an hour. Acid from the lemon juice and wine curdles cream if overbeaten, so whisking should be steady and watched closely. Thickening comes from the cream's fat and air incorporated during whisking, and it should stand until set.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sherry, cream. 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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