Skip to main content
Drink

Syllabub Everlasting

A frothy sweet drink made with sugar candy, heavy cream, sweet wine, lime juice, lime zest, and orange-flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lime and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 937 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Syllabub Everlasting

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Sift the sugar candy into a mixing bowl.

  2. Add the cream, sweet wine, lime juice, lime zest, and orange-flower water.

  3. Froth the mixture well using a whisk or electric mixer.

  4. Pour the frothy mixture into glasses and serve.

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. Lime + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together937 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  3. Wine + orangetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Cream + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,887 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Heavy cream
Whipped into foam, it forms the light, rich body of the syllabub.
Sugar candy
Sweetens the mixture and adds sweetness to balance the citrus acidity.
Sweet wine
Adds flavour and liquid, with its sweetness and acidity shaping the drink.
Lime juice
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and thickens the cream as it curdles slightly.

The step that matters

Froth the mixture well. Whisking incorporates air into the cream, creating a stable foam. Under-whipping leaves the mixture thin and runny, while over-whisking can turn cream grainy or buttery.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, wine, orange. 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.

More syllabub recipes

Whipped 15Staffordshire 7Lemon 6Birthday 3 See all 113 →

You might also like

Wine WheyWine Whey111 recipesRaisin WineRaisin Wine64 recipesEgg WineEgg Wine58 recipesElderberry WineElderberry Wine51 recipes