Somersetshire Syllabub

A true "syllabub under the cow" — the milk is meant to fall a long way into the wine, so that it froths and sets into a soft curd over a boozy liquid. Everything depends on that fall and on real clotted cream.

• Milk the bowl fullThe original assumes someone milking straight into the bowl from a height, so that the milk arrives warm and aerated. With shop milk, no quantity can be recovered: use enough whole milk to fill the bowl on top of the two pints of wine, warmed to roughly blood heat, and pour it from as high as you can manage in a thin stream, or froth it hard first.
• Use pasteurised milk and creamNothing in this dish is heated, so the dairy goes to the table as it arrives. Buy pasteurised whole milk and pasteurised clotted cream rather than farm-gate raw milk, and keep the finished bowl refrigerated.
• Clouted cream"Clouted cream" is the older name for what is now sold as clotted cream, thick scalded cream from the West Country, at around 55 per cent fat. Loosen it with a spoon so it spreads; whipped double cream is a poor stand-in and will not sit "pretty high".
• Nonpareil comfitsTiny hard sugar pellets of the kind made by sugar-panning, sometimes over a seed centre. Modern nonpareils (hundreds-and-thousands) are the nearest equivalent.
• Sugar to tasteNo quantity is given. Dissolve the sugar in the wine before the milk goes in, which is the order the recipe sets out, and judge the amount by the wines you are using.
• The winesA pint each of port and sherry is a strong base by modern standards. The recipe allows "sherry or other white wine"; a cream or medium sherry suits the sweetness better than a bone-dry fino.
• The twenty minutesThe recipe waits twenty minutes before the cream goes on, which reads as time for the curd to rise and the wine whey to settle beneath it. On that reading, leave the bowl alone once the milk is in rather than stirring, or the two layers will not form.
• Yield and servingTwo pints of wine plus however much milk fills the bowl: a party bowl, not a dish for two. Serve in glasses with a spoon, so drinkers get both the curd and the wine below it, and finish it the same day.