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Dessert

A Birthday Syllabub

A sweet, frothy dessert made from sugar, lemon juice, wine, milk, and nutmeg, served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Port wine and sherry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 132 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

A Birthday Syllabub

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the base

  1. In a large bowl, combine the sugar and lemon juice, stirring well.

  2. Add the port wine, sherry, and brandy to the mixture.

  3. Grate in the nutmeg.

Make the curd and serve

  1. Pour in the milk until the bowl is full.

  2. To serve, place a portion of the curd in each glass, fill with whey, and top with a little rich cream.

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. Port wine + sherrytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together132 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Port wine + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Provide acidity that helps the milk separate into curd and whey.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the lemon juice and wine.
Milk
Forms the bulk of the curd and whey once it meets the acidic mixture.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, colour and fruity depth to the base.
Sherry
Adds dry, nutty flavour and extra acidity to the base.

The step that matters

Pouring in the milk. The acid from the lemon juice and wine causes the milk to separate into curd and whey, so the milk must be added to the already-mixed base to set the curd.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, port wine, sherry, brandy, nutmeg, milk, 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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