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Dessert

Very Superior Whipped Syllabubs

A chilled lemon dessert made with sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, sherry, brandy, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,209 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Very Superior Whipped Syllabubs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Weigh the sugar and rasp the rinds of the lemons into it.

  2. Pound or roll the mixture to a powder and place it in a bowl.

  3. Add the strained lemon juice, sherry, and brandy to the bowl.

Whisk and serve

  1. When the sugar is nearly dissolved, add the cream and whisk the mixture well.

  2. Remove the froth as it rises and pour the mixture into glasses.

  3. For best flavor, prepare the syllabubs 24 hours in advance.

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. Sherry + brandytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Brandy + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Fine sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps draw oil from the lemon rind into the mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens flavor and thickens the cream as it is whisked.
Sherry
Adds aromatic flavor and acidity to the liquid base.
Brandy
Adds aroma and alcohol-based flavor to the base.
Rich cream
Provides fat and body, whisking traps air to form a light, thick texture.

The step that matters

Whisking in the cream. Add cream only once the sugar is nearly dissolved, then whisk well. Undissolved sugar leaves grittiness, and the acidic liquid thickens the cream as air is whipped in, so under- or over-whisking changes the texture.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, sherry, brandy, 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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