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Dessert

Common Syllabub

A frothy dessert made from cider, beer, nutmeg, sugar, milk, and garnished with currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cider and currant work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 500 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Common Syllabub

Ingredients

Directions

Make the drink

  1. In a large bowl, combine the cider and strong beer.

  2. Grate in the nutmeg and sweeten to your taste.

  3. Add enough milk to create a strong froth.

Rest and serve

  1. Let the mixture stand for 1 hour.

  2. Garnish with washed, picked, and plumped currants 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. Cider + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together500 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Cider + beertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Beer + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together298 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Nutmeg + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Milk + curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Cider
Forms the acidic, fruity base that the rest of the drink is built on.
Strong beer
Adds bitterness and body, balancing the sweetness and giving the drink depth.
Milk
Creates the frothy, creamy top layer when added to the drink.
Sugar
Sweetens the drink to balance the acidity of the cider.

The step that matters

Adding the milk. Milk must be added in enough quantity to form a strong froth; too little gives a flat top, and the froth is what gives syllabub its characteristic texture.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cider, beer, sugar, milk, currant):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cider, beer, sugar, milk, currant. 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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