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Syllabub
A recipe at least two centuries old says: "To make a fine syllabub from the cow sweeten a quart of cyder, with double refined sugar, and grate a nutmeg into it; then milk the cow into your liquor. When you have thus added what quantity of milk you think proper, pour half a pint, or more (in proportion to the quantity of syllabub you make) of the sweetest cream you can get, all over it."
This is the eighteenth-century "syllabub under the cow," in which the milk is drawn from the animal directly into a bowl of sweetened cider so that the force of the stream does the frothing. The method depends on milk that has never been heated, and that is where it fails today.
- Raw milk, unheated, by designMilk taken straight from the udder into a bowl and drunk within minutes is raw milk at its least controlled — no chilling, no pasteurisation, no filtration. Campylobacter, Salmonella, Listeria and E. coli O157:H7 are all documented in raw cow's milk, and nothing in this preparation reduces them. The acidity and alcohol of cider do not sterilise milk.
- The cream compounds itThe half pint of "sweetest cream" poured over the top is also raw and unheated. A dish assembled at the milking shed and served at ambient temperature — with milk that leaves the animal at body heat — sits in the danger zone from the first moment.
- No cooking step exists to fixUnlike a custard or a posset, syllabub from the cow is never brought to any temperature at all. There is no point in the procedure where heat could be inserted without destroying the froth that is the whole object. If you want syllabub, use a current recipe built on pasteurised dairy.
- "Cyder" is alcoholicIn an eighteenth-century English text cider means fermented apple cider, not the sweet unfermented juice sold under that name in North America; period strengths varied considerably. The acid and alcohol together are what curdle and thicken the milk into curd and whey.
- Double refined sugarSugar of the period came as a hard cone that was broken and pounded; "double refined" was the whitest and cleanest grade, the closest equivalent to ordinary modern granulated or caster sugar. The instruction is about purity, not about a special type.
- The measuresThe measures are English, not American: an imperial quart is about 1.1 litres and half an imperial pint about 285 ml (a US quart is 32 fl oz, about 950 ml, and a US half pint 8 fl oz). Nutmeg was grated whole to order, as the ground spice loses its aroma quickly.
- What it was meant to look likeCorrectly made, the drink separates into a stiff white foam on top and a thin sweet-sour liquid beneath. It was drunk from specialised glasses, often two-handled, and some forms had a spout at the base so the whey could be sipped from under the froth.