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Cake Syllabub
Moisten well a thin sponge cake with sherry wine; then rub off on pieces of loaf sugar the yellow rind of two lemons; dissolve this sugar in one pint of sweet cream; add the juice of the lemons to a little more sugar; then add gradually to the cream. Whip the cream until solid; then pile it on the cake, which has been put in a glass bowl. Pile the cream until it stands high above the edge of bowl. Ornament the top with strawberries or bits of solid fruit jelly. This makes a very pretty as well as a delicious dish.
A whipped syllabub piled over wine-soaked sponge — essentially a trifle without custard. The hinge is the acid: lemon juice will thin or curdle cream if it goes in carelessly, so it must be added slowly to cold cream and whipped promptly.
- Add the lemon slowlyCombine the juice with sugar first, then trickle it into the cream while whisking, rather than pouring it in at once. Cream at room temperature or below 36% fat is much more likely to break; use cold heavy or whipping cream.
- "Sweet cream"Means fresh, unsoured cream, not sweetened. A pint is 2 cups; well whipped it roughly doubles in volume.
- Loaf sugar and the rindLoaf sugar was hard sugar broken from a cone; sugar cubes are the direct equivalent. Rubbing them over the lemon until they turn yellow and damp draws out the peel oil — this is oleo-saccharum, and it gives a rounder lemon flavour than grated zest. Let the sugar dissolve fully in the cream before whipping.
- Sugar quantities are unstatedThe recipe never says how much sugar beyond the two lemons' worth of rubbed cubes and "a little more" for the juice. Reckon on about 1/3 cup total for a pint of cream and adjust to taste before whipping.
- Whip "until solid"Stiff peaks, no further. Acidified cream tightens faster than plain cream and turns grainy quickly, so stop as soon as the whisk leaves a clean track.
- The cake baseA thin sponge or a split layer, cut to line the bottom of the bowl. Sherry should moisten it without flooding it; let it soak in for a few minutes before the cream goes on.
- TimingAssemble within a couple of hours of serving. Syllabub made with this much lemon will begin to weep and separate on standing, and the wine will keep migrating into the cream.
- ServingServes six to eight, spooned so that each portion gets cake and cream. Strawberries or cubes of firm currant or quince jelly on top, as directed.
Syllabub is one of the oldest surviving English sweets, recorded from the sixteenth century as a mixture of cream with wine or cider — the acid and alcohol thickening or curdling the cream deliberately. Early versions were drunk, the liquid whey settling beneath a foam; by the eighteenth century cooks had developed the "whipt" or "everlasting" syllabub, whisked stiff enough to hold its shape and pile into glasses. Setting it over wine-soaked sponge, as here, puts it a half-step from trifle, which is often said to have grown out of the same family of cream-and-wine dishes. It is the kind of dessert that was valued for requiring no oven and no ice, while making a tall, showy centrepiece in a glass bowl on the table.