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Dessert

Syllabub

A frothy dessert of macaroons topped with a lemon‑citrus cream and sherry, chilled before serving.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Syllabub

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syllabub

  1. In a large bowl, mix the sugar, lemon juice, lemon rind, cinnamon, and wine until the sugar dissolves.

  2. Add the cream and whip until frothy.

Assemble and chill

  1. Arrange the macaroons at the bottom of a deep dish.

  2. Skim the froth from the Syllabub and place it on the macaroons.

  3. Continue until all the mixture is frothy.

  4. Refrigerate for at least 12 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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sherry + cinnamontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together649 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 into foam that forms the light, airy body of the dessert.
Macaroons
Absorb some of the wine and sweet liquid, softening into a tender base layer.
Caster sugar
Sweetens the mixture and dissolves into the wine and lemon juice before the cream is added.
Sherry or madeira
Adds the wine flavour and acidity that the cream is set against.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the cream and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Refrigerate for at least 12 hours before serving. The acidic wine and lemon juice slowly thicken the cream and soak into the macaroons, so the layers only set and develop their flavour after a long rest.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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