Syllabub is (now) a dessert made of whipped cream, white wine, and sugar. It may be flavoured with something such as lemon or fruit.
Whether it is a drink or something that you spoon depends on how much white wine you use, and how you handle the cream.
If you want a spooning version of Syllabub, you’d whip the cream separately, then fold in the alcohol.
If you want a drinking version, you whip together the unwhipped cream and the alcohol until they are foamy, using a bit more wine as well. You get a layered effect of the white liquid in the bottom of the glass, with the foam on top.
You consume a Syllabub with a straw for the liquid part and a spoon for the top part, somewhat the same as people would tackle an ice cream float.
Syllabub is still made in England, and people still know what a Syllabub is, but in North America, Syllabubs are just considered a historical curiosity.
Syllabub used to also have beaten egg white in it, perhaps to reinforce the whipped cream. The beaten egg white has disappeared. Cider was often used instead of white wine.
History Notes
There is a theory that the idea for Syllabub came about by squirting milk out straight out of the cow’s udder into a bowl, where it would froth.
Some people, such as writer Ivan Day, discount the direct from cow theory. Day is pretty much the authoritative writer on Syllabubs owing to his paper “Further Musings On Syllabub, or Why Not “Jumble It A Pritie While”?”
Day tried making one straight from a cow. He says you get a bit of froth at first, but that that goes away, leaving just a mess of unappealing strings of curdled milk — and cow dandruff. Nothing remotely like anything you’d serve to guests in Western society of any era.
Day wonders if it all stemmed from a man named John Nott who published Cook’s and Confectioner’s Dictionary in 1723. Nott, says Day, seems to be the first one who mentions a cow. He gives a recipe for A Worcestershire Syllabub. Nott adds a note at the end, “If it be in the Field, only milk the Cow into the Cyder.” Day speculates that Nott didn’t actually try this, but was just blithely tossing out a thought which might in truth have been spectacularly unhelpful, especially as the concept may have been mistaken as gospel and copied for the next hundred years of so, untested, by various other cookbook writers. Day says he tried these copied versions (such as that given by Hannah Glasse), and they just don’t work. [1]
Day says that if you follow the directions of Sir Kenelm Digby, you can make a very decent foamy substance. And that if you let it drain for another 24 hours, you get a nice looking and tasting mousse.
Digby’s recipe, which appeared in his cookbook “The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened” (published 1669), is as follows:
“To make a plain Syllabub: Take a pint of verjuyce in a boul, milk the Cow to the verjuyce; take off the Curd, and take sweet Cream and beat them together with a little Sack and Sugar; put it into your Syllabub-pot; then strew Sugar on it, and so send it to the Table.”
[Ed: in today’s English, squirt milk directly into an acid such as verjuice, then strain away and discard the curdled bits, keep just the creamy whey that remains, add additional cream plus sugar and strong, sweetened white wine, then beat.]
Some people in the late 1600s said that in the absence of the squirting force from a live or wooden cow, you could pour milk in a thin stream from on high into your mixture. By the 1670s, a tool for making syllabubs called a “dry cow” or a “wooden cow” had been invented. Recipes told you to make the Syllabub by using the tool to squirt the milk into your mixture. So perhaps, some writers today speculate, there was something important in the squirting action that they were after, that none of us modern people have been able to figure out.
By 1758, a man named Dr Hayles had invented a set of bellows specially designed to “blow up cream into syllabub with great expedition.”
But, it could simply be that we’re using the wrong cow these days. Day notes that results with either the pouring from on high method, or dry cow method, get better the higher the cream content of the milk you’re using — whipping cream producing the best result, milk from which the cream has been removed producing the worst. Modern cows are mostly chosen for their efficiency at producing lots of milk; the breeds which are better at producing milk with a very high cream (aka butterfat) content are now very rare.
All that being said, it may be that it’s the temperature that was wanted. Milk straight from the cow squirted into the bowl may have introduced some frothing, but later recipe writers definitely wanted it whipped.
It wasn’t chilled before serving. Perhaps, some speculate, they even wanted it slightly warm, thus the milk straight from the cow. Or, remembering that milk was unpasteurized then, it would start to clabber pretty much immediately as soon as it was allowed to set around, especially because there was no refrigeration to slow the clabbering down. So, it could be, the speculation goes, that the recipe writers were saying they wanted totally fresh milk. Clabbered milk is partially curdled from the clabbering process, and if this were added to the wine, then an unacceptable level of further curdling might occur.
In any event, by the late 1700s, the whipped cream version seems to have become the most popular version. It was whipped for a long time. After each whipping, the foam produced was removed from it to drain, and then the liquid cream remaining whipped again. This process could take place over a day.
By the late 1700s, they also discovered that lowering the amount of wine made it far easier to mount the foam.
At some point in time, Syllabub started being chilled. Perhaps because it would last longer before serving, perhaps just because chilling something in a kitchen became possible at any time of the year, and chilled things off-season were a treat. Chilling also meant the fancier, delicate glassware got to be used.
The cream could have been whipped with a whisk as early as 1765 (see Susannah Carter below.) Other recipes don’t say how to whip it, they just assume that you know how.
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[1] Day’s reasoning notwithstanding, some people point out that there are indeed references prior to 1723 to making at least part of your Syllabub right under the cow, and perhaps too many of them to discount them entirely, they say.
Nathaniel Brook, author of “The Compleat Cook” (published in the 1650s) writes: “An excellent Sillabub. Fill your Sillabub-pot with Syder (for that is the best for a Sillabub) and good store of Sugar and a little Nutmeg; stir it well together, put in as much thick Cream by two or three spoonfuls at a time, as hard as you can, as though you milke it in, then stir it together exceeding softly once about, and let it stand two hours at least ere it is eaten, for the standing makes the Curd.”
The “squirt under cow” supporters point out the directions to add the cream by force, as if imitating a squirting action. (Note, however, that you do not get cream directly from a cow — you get whole milk, which then has to be separated into cream.)
Literature & Lore
“Make your Syllabub of either Cyder or Wine, sweeten it pretty sweet, and grate Nutmeg in, then milk the Milk into the Liquor; when this is done, pour over the Top half a Pint or a Pint of Cream, according to the Quantity of Syllabub you make. You may make this Syllabub at home, only have new Milk; make it as hot as Milk from the Cow, and out of a Tea-pot, or any such thing, pour it in holding your Hand very high”
— Hannah Glasse. The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy. 1758.
“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.”
— Susannah Carter. The Frugal Housewife: Chap. XIV. Of Syllabubs, Creams, and Flummery. London: Francis Newbery. 1765.
“A White Syllabub: Take two porringers of cream, and one of white wine, grate in the skin of a lemon, take the whites of three eggs, sweeten to your taste, then whip it with a whisk; take off the froth as it rises, pour it into your syllabub-glasses or pots, and they are fit for use.”
— Susannah Carter. The Frugal Housewife: Chap. XIV. Of Syllabubs, Creams, and Flummery. London: Francis Newbery. 1765.
Language Notes
In 1584, Syllabub was spelt “selibub” by Sir Thomas Cogan.”
Some people think that “Sille” may have been an allusion to a type of white wine made in Silléry, France (earlier: Sellery), and that “bub” may have been medieval slang for a bubbly drink. Others, though, think this is a load of codswallop and just some people having us on. Sillery was known as a wine term since around 1640, though the OED says 1680: “Writing also in 1701, he [Count d’Olonne] alludes to the care with which the Sillery wines were made forty years before.” [Vizetelly, Henry. A History of Champagne. London: Henry Sotheran & Co. 1882. Page 32.] Even so, that may not be early enough for “Sille” to have been known as term for wine for it to have influenced the word “Syllabub.”
Others say it’s from an old dialect word (not specified) in Lincolnshire meaning “happy belly.”
Milk was often strained through a strainer to get out straw, animal hair, etc. The strainer in the 1600s was called a “sile.”
Sources
Day, Ivan. Further Musings on Syllabub. In Petits Propos Culinaires. Vol 53. 1996.
Hattie, Ellis. Ancient recipes: Repast historic. London: Daily Telegraph. 30 December 2008.