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Whipped Syllabubs
Mix a quarter of a pint of sherry with two table-spoonfuls of brandy, stir the mixture into half a pint of thick cream, and add a little grated nutmeg, the strained juice of half a lemon, and as much sugar as will sweeten the syllabub pleasantly. Put the cream into glasses, pile whipped cream upon the surface, and serve. Sufficient to fill eight glasses. Probable cost, 1s., without the sherry and brandy. Time, one hour or more to whip the cream.
A whipped, or "everlasting," syllabub — the acid and alcohol do as much work as the whisk. Get the ratio right and it holds for a day; get it wrong and it weeps.
- Imperial measuresThe pint here is 20 fl oz, so half a pint of cream is 10 fl oz (about 1¼ cups) and a quarter pint of sherry is 5 fl oz. A gill, had the book used one, would be 5 fl oz likewise.
- Thick creamProbably closest to British double cream (around 48% fat), though Victorian "thick cream" was not a defined standard. US heavy cream at 36% will whip but gives a softer, looser result; cream with added stabilisers and gums tends to turn pasty against the wine.
- The hinge: add the liquid to the cream, not the reverseCombine sherry, brandy, lemon juice and sugar first and let the sugar dissolve completely, then pour that into the cream in a slow stream while whisking. Tipping cream into a pool of acid and spirit curdles it into grains that will not recover.
- One hour of whippingThat is a hand whisk and a large bowl. With a stand mixer on medium this is two to four minutes, and the extra volume of wine means it thickens later than plain cream — stop at soft, drooping peaks. Whipped stiff, a syllabub goes buttery and separates in the glass.
- SherryA dry or medium amontillado or oloroso suits the dish better than cream sherry, which will be cloying given the sugar already added; the recipe itself does not say which sherry was intended. Sweeten to taste after the wine is in, not before.
- Sugar quantityGenuinely undefined. Start with about 2 tablespoons of caster sugar for this volume and taste; the lemon and the dry wine need more than you would expect.
- Yield and servingEight glasses as written; the quantities imply small glasses of roughly 3 to 4 fl oz rather than tumblers. Make it several hours ahead and keep it cold; a well-made whipped syllabub will usually hold for a day.
- The toppingThe recipe says only to pile whipped cream on the surface; it is presumably plain cream whipped separately, without wine, so that it stands up above the softer syllabub beneath.
Syllabub runs through English cookery from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth, and it began as a drink rather than a spoon sweet: sweetened wine or cider in a bowl, with milk poured in from a height — or, in the country version repeated in many books, milked directly from the cow — so the acid curdled it into a frothy top over a boozy liquid below. The name's origin is unsettled; it is often said to combine "sille," a wine from the Sillery district of Champagne, with "bub" for a bubbling drink, but that reading is traditional rather than documented. By the time Cassell's was compiled, the drinking syllabub had largely given way to the stiffer whipped or "everlasting" kind seen here, which keeps its structure for a day or more and can be served in glasses with a spoon. The costing of a shilling excludes the sherry and brandy, as Cassell's costings commonly do where wine is concerned.