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Staffordshire Syllabub
Put a pint of cider into a bowl with a glassful of brandy four table-spoonfuls of sugar, and half a grated nutmeg. Fill the bowl with frothed new milk, or with milk heated till it is new-milk-warm. Pour this into the syllabub from a teapot held high above it.
A whisked, pourable syllabub built on cider rather than wine, and one of the few that asks for warm milk instead of cold cream. The technique is the whole recipe: the height of the pour is what makes the froth.
- Cider means hard ciderIn a British book of this period cider is fermented and alcoholic. Unfiltered sweet apple juice will give a much sweeter result with less of an edge against the sugar.
- A glassful of brandyA wineglass in Victorian measure is about 2 fl oz. That plus a pint of cider makes this a modest drink rather than a strong one.
- New milk, and what to use instead"New milk" is milk fresh from the cow, unskimmed and still warm. Use pasteurised whole milk, warmed to about 98F -- blood temperature, which is what "new-milk-warm" describes.
- The pour is the methodHolding the vessel high aerates the milk as it falls and drives air into the cider below. A teapot works because the spout gives a thin, controlled stream; a small jug or a milk frother pitcher does the same job. The recipe asks only that it be held high above the bowl.
- Expect it to separateThe acid and alcohol will curdle the milk into a soft curd that floats over a thin, clear liquor. That is the dish, not a failure. Serve in glasses so the two layers show.
- NutmegHalf a whole nutmeg grated is roughly 1 to 1.5 teaspoons and will dominate. Start with half that if you want the apple to come through.
- Yield and timingA pint of cider plus milk to fill the bowl gives several small glasses, depending on the size of bowl used. Serve soon after making, as the froth begins to collapse.
Syllabub belongs to a long English tradition of drinks in which something acid and alcoholic is combined with milk or cream until it separates into a froth over a clear liquor -- the name is recorded from the sixteenth century, though its origin is unsettled and the often-repeated derivations are guesses. Some versions were said to be made by milking a cow straight into a bowl of cider or wine, which is exactly what this recipe imitates with its warmed milk poured from a height; hence the name "syllabub under the cow", attested in later English recipe books. In fashionable houses the dish had already largely been displaced by the thick whipped "everlasting" syllabub that holds its shape and is eaten with a spoon. This one is still meant to be drunk.