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Fruit Syllabubs
For fruit syllabubs, add one-half of a cupful of powdered sugar and one-quarter of a teaspoonful of vanilla to one pint of heavy cream and whip to a solid froth. Put any nice fruit into glasses, sweeten with powdered sugar and heap over it the syllabubs.
A two-minute dessert once the cream is cold. The only real skill is knowing when to stop the whisk.
- Whip to "a solid froth," not past itThe phrase means stiff enough to hold its shape when heaped, roughly medium-stiff peaks. Cream can turn grainy very quickly once it reaches that point, so slow the mixer near the end and finish by hand.
- Powdered sugar then and nowNineteenth-century powdered sugar was granulated sugar ground fine, closer to today's superfine than to confectioners'. Modern confectioners' sugar contains cornstarch, which is harmless here and actually helps the cream hold; superfine or caster sugar gives a cleaner flavour.
- Cream"Heavy cream" should be 36 percent fat or more. Ultra-pasteurised cream whips more slowly and to a slightly looser foam; chill the bowl and beaters if that is all you have.
- Half a cup of sugar is on the sweet sideDepending on how fine the sugar is, that is somewhere between about 60 g and 100 g to a pint of cream, and the fruit beneath is sweetened again. A third of a cup in the cream is closer to modern taste, especially with ripe summer fruit.
- Prepare the fruit firstSugaring the fruit twenty to thirty minutes ahead draws out juice and makes a syrup in the bottom of the glass, which is the point of the layering. Berries, sliced peaches, currants and cherries all suit it.
- Yield and timingA pint of cream roughly doubles in volume and fills six to eight small glasses over fruit. Assemble no more than an hour or two ahead; the cream will begin to weep into the fruit juice by the next day.
A true syllabub, from at least the sixteenth century, was cream or milk curdled with wine or cider and sweetened, sometimes drunk from a spouted glass with the clear liquor beneath and the froth above. By the late Victorian period the wine had dropped out of many American versions, leaving what is essentially sweetened whipped cream under the old name, and that is the version here: vanilla instead of sack, fruit instead of liquor. The survival of the word syllabub for a dish that no longer curdles anything is a good example of how kitchen vocabulary outlasts kitchen practice.