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Syllabubs
Soak the thin rind of a fresh lemon in a pint of sherry or Madeira, and let it remain all night. Sweeten it well, and add three table-spoonfuls of brandy, a pint and a half of rich cream beaten up with the white of an egg, and the juice of the lemon. Beat the mixture to froth. As it rises place it in the glasses, pile it as high as possible, and place it in a cool place. In a little time the syllabubs will get firm, and settle into a highly-flavoured preparation covered with snowy froth. If liked, melted red currant or black currant jelly may be mixed with half the cream before it is whipped, and this will make the syllabubs contrast in colour. Syllabubs should be made the day before wanted.
An everlasting syllabub — the kind that holds its froth for a day or more rather than the older sort drunk straight from the glass. Two things decide whether it works: the fat content of the cream and how little you whisk it.
- The measuresCassell's pints are imperial, 20 fl oz. A pint of sherry is about 2½ US cups; a pint and a half of cream is about 3¾ US cups. This makes a large quantity — figure on ten to twelve small glasses.
- Cream"Rich cream" here is best read as the equivalent of modern double cream (around 48 per cent butterfat). US heavy cream at 36 per cent will froth but throws off more liquid and gives a slacker, shorter-lived head. Have it very cold.
- Sweeten it wellNo quantity is given. Around 4 oz (about ½ cup) caster sugar to this volume of wine is in the right range. The recipe sweetens after the night's steeping; whenever you add it, stir until fully dissolved so no grit remains.
- The rindPare it thin enough to see light through, with no white pith, or the overnight steeping turns bitter. Take the rind out before the cream goes in.
- The hinge: whisk lightlyWhisk only until the froth just holds and lift it off with a skimmer or slotted spoon as it rises, exactly as written. Whisking the whole bowl to stiff peaks makes a heavy curd that sinks into the wine instead of floating over it.
- Raw egg whiteThe white is not cooked at any point. Use a pasteurised white, or leave it out — with proper double cream the froth stands well enough without it.
- Standing overnightThe separation is the point, not a fault. The wine and juice sink to a clear scented layer at the bottom and the froth sets above it. Keep the glasses in the refrigerator, uncovered or loosely covered, and do not stir before serving.
- The currant versionMelt the jelly and let it cool completely before folding it through half the cream; warm jelly will slacken the cream and it will not hold air.
Syllabub is one of the oldest surviving English sweets, recorded from the sixteenth century in spellings such as sillibub and solybubbe; the origin of the name is genuinely unknown, and the frequently repeated derivations from "Sillery" wine or from "bub" as slang for a drink are guesses rather than documented etymology. Early versions were a drink: sweetened cider or wine in the glass, with milk poured or squirted in from a height — some seventeenth-century instructions say to milk the cow directly into the bowl — so that the acid curdled the milk and left a frothy cap. By the eighteenth century cooks had turned it into the "everlasting" or "whipt" syllabub given here, in which whipped cream is skimmed off in layers and piled into tall glasses, and it became a fixture of the dessert table alongside jellies and flummeries. The instruction to make it the day before is the mark of the later style, in which the mixture settles deliberately into two layers, wine below and snow above.