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Drink

Syllabubs

A frothy alcoholic dessert drink made with lemon rind, white wine, cream, brandy, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and brandy work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 620 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Syllabubs

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the wine

  1. Steep the thin rind of the lemons in the white wine overnight, covered tightly.

  2. Remove the lemon peel from the wine.

Whip and serve

  1. Combine the wine, cream, brandy, and lemon juice in a large bowl.

  2. Sweeten to taste and beat the mixture to a froth with a whisk.

  3. Prepare syllabub glasses on a tray and skim the froth off as it rises.

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. White wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together620 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

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

  5. White wine + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,760 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Its fat traps air when whisked, forming the body and stable foam of the syllabub.
White wine
Provides the liquid base and carries the lemon flavour through the dish.
Lemons
Rind gives aromatic oils to the wine, and juice adds acidity that brightens the cream.
Brandy
Adds warm aroma and depth of flavour that balances the sweetness and acidity.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture to taste, balancing the acidity of the lemon and wine.

The step that matters

Beating to a froth. Whisking pulls air into the cream, whose fat partly clumps around the bubbles to hold the foam. Beating too long turns the cream grainy and buttery. Skimming the froth as it rises collects it before it collapses.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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