Eggnog gets a bad rap and it's for a good reason. Eggnog sucks if it's commercially made. But for me, it isn't about drinking raw eggs. It's just something about eggnog that is gross. When I came across this recipe for syllabub in Dutch Fork Cookery, I thought it sounded like a much better way to drink alcoholic eggs for the holidays, and was I ever right. My ancestral South Carolina Germans really knew what they were doing, and I am going to share their wisdom with you today.
This book is a special one to me. I learned about it in my Southern Foodways class at the University of South Carolina, and I called around a few independent bookstores in the area trying to locate a copy. The only place in 2014 that had one was Books on Main in Newberry. I begged them to hold a copy for me til the weekend, and I drove out there and spent $53 on this thing. They told me at the time it was the last copy the author's son had provided them, so I like to think it was $53 well spent. Not to mention, my maternal family name, Meetze, is included right on the inside cover.
There are a lot of recipes in there that sound unappealing to the modern palate, but there are plenty of very recognizable ones we are still eating today. And by we I mean you too. Then there are others, like this one, I've been working on modernizing, and some are just going to be relics of the past. They just are, sorry scrapple.
I spent a half a day this past weekend experimenting with ways to make this drink way easier than how my Dutch Fork relatives had to make it in the 1800s. For one, they had to make stiff peaks out of their egg whites using a fork and elbow grease, while we get to throw it in a stand mixer for two minutes.
The recipe below yields one drink, but it's easily scalable, though be sure not to overload your stand mixer with liquids. I wouldn't make more than six drinks in one go in a standard Kitchenaid stand mixer.
Syllabub
Equipment
- stand mixer
Ingredients
- ½ cup heavy whipping cream
- 1 ½ tbsp granulated sugar
- ½ tsp lemon juice
- 1 tbsp brandy or sherry (optional: double it)
- 1 egg white
- lemon zest for garnish
Instructions
- In the bowl of the stand mixer, use the whisk attachment to beat the egg white until stiff peaks form. Stiff peaks are when you lift the whisk from the cream (after turning the mixer off) and it looks like the top of a Hershey's kiss. You can also separately beat the egg with an immersion blender and whisk attachment for a creamier syllabub drink.
- Gently add the sugar, cream, lemon juice, and brandy or sherry to the mixer. Pour these in beside the egg whites instead of dumping on top, or you may have a less fluffy drink.
- Beat everything on low for two minutes.
- Use a rubber spatula to pour into a wine glass, and garnish with lemon zest.
- You can make larger batches of this at once, but have ready guests waiting. It may flatten the longer it sits out.
Are you wondering about sherry versus brandy? I was too, and I bought both and made both versions. That's why one glass has lemon zest and the other has a flower — the brandy version has the lemon zest here. Personally, I like the brandy version better, as the brandy seems to harmonize into the drink better. I could taste sherry in that version, and it seemed a little loud to me. But it all comes down to your personal preference on sherry versus brandy. Just make sure to use a decent quality one no matter what, as it's the only booze in this drink, and bad quality will shine through.
If you want smaller bottles, ask the liquor store folks to grab you one from behind the counter. They have to keep littler ones there since they are easier to steal. And you can have fun conversations, like the cashier at the Kroger liquor store who told me that the joke is that VSOP (the brandy brand) stood for Very Special Old People. I don't know what the joke was, but I laughed to be nice.
