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Fine Whisked or Whipped Syllabub

A frothy, sweetened cream and wine mixture flavored with citrus and brandy, served chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Fine Whisked or Whipped Syllabub

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Combine cream, mountain wine, lemon juice, orange juice, brandy, orange-flower water, and powdered sugar to taste in a large bowl.

  2. Whisk the mixture until frothy.

  3. If the mixture does not froth well, add the egg whites and whisk again.

Serve

  1. Spoon the froth into syllabub glasses, grate nutmeg on top, and fill the glasses with the remaining froth.

  2. Optionally color the syllabub with cochineal or red port wine.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Cream + sugartop 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

Cream
Forms the body of the froth and gives the syllabub its rich, creamy texture.
Mountain wine
Adds acidity and flavour that balances the sweetness and richness of the cream.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps thicken the cream slightly.
Egg whites
Help stabilise the whisked froth when the cream does not foam well on its own.

The step that matters

Whisking to a stable froth. Cream whisked too little stays runny, and over-whisking turns it grainy or buttery. Stop when the froth holds its shape. Adding egg whites can help a stubborn mixture foam.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Raspberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, wine, lemon, brandy, sugar, nutmeg, egg. 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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