Syllabub


Syllabub is an English sweet frothy drink which was popular from the 16th to 19th centuries. Syllabub also refers to a dessert based on the drink, which is still eaten. The drink was made of milk or cream, curdled by the addition of wine, cider, or other acid, and often sweetened and flavoured. The dessert is typically made of whipped cream, wine or sherry, sugar and lemon juice.

History

Syllabub has been known in England at least since John Heywood's Thersytes of about 1537: "You and I... Muste walke to him and eate a solybubbe." The word occurs repeatedly, including in Samuel Pepys's diary for 12 July 1663; "Then to Comissioner Petts and had a good Sullybub" and in Thomas Hughes's Tom Brown at Oxford of 1861; "We retire to tea or syllabub beneath the shade of some great oak."
Hannah Glasse, in the 18th century, published the recipe for whipt syllabubs in The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. The recipe included "a quart of thick cream, and half a pint of sack, the juice of two Seville oranges or lemons, grate in the peel of two lemons, half a pound of double refined sugar." After whipping the ingredients together, they were poured into glasses. The curdled cream separated and floated to the top of the glass.