Stephen Hales's Syllabub Machine

Dr Stephen Hales FRS (1677-1761)

Many years ago while working on a paper on the subject of syllabub, I came across a reference to an ingenious invention by a certain Dr Hayles for making this frothy, uniquely English dairy dish. I found the citation in Old English Glasses by Albert Hartshorne, who quoted an obscure eighteenth century reference whose source I could not track down, 

“Dr. Hayles hath actually published what has been for some time talked of, a tube of tin with a box of the same at the lower end of it...that is full of small holes. This engine, with the help of a pair of bellows, blows up cream into syllabub with great expedition. This complex machine has already procured the doctor the blessing of the housekeeper in this palace, and of all such as she in the present generation (who know the time and labour required to whip this sort of geer), and will cause his memory to be held in reverence by all housekeepers in the generations that are yet to come.” A. Hartshorne, Old English Glasses, (London and New York: 1897), p. 307.

In my ignorance, I did not know who Dr Hayles was, so I did not have a clue where to look for his publication. I searched for some time in the British Library, the Public Record Office and other archives, but gave up when I got no results. It seemed to me that the doctor had not lived up to the promise of being 'held in reverence by all housekeepers in the generations that are yet to come.' He and his eccentric machine had been entirely forgotten. Despite this I was pretty keen to have a go at rescuing his syllabub engine from oblivion. The brief description quoted by Hartshorne was clear enough, so following the instructions I made the instrument below. It indeed proved to be an excellent and labour saving way of making syllabub and was tremendous fun to use, bringing a smile to the face of anyone who watched it in action. I even demonstrated it on a couple of television programmes, including an episode on eighteenth century food in my own series Hungry for the Past. 

Syllabub engine Mark I

After a few years it eventually dawned on me who the mysterious Dr. Hayles was. The problem all along had been with the spelling of his name - Hayles rather than Hales. If I had had the wit to work this out in the first place I would have realised that the gentleman in question was none other than the great eighteenth century clergyman botanist and inventor Stephen Hales, noted mainly for his early experiments on the respiration of plants. After searching through Hale's books I noticed that in one work on the distillation of seawater, there was an additional essay at the end entitled An Account of the good Effect of blowing Showers of Air up through MILK, thereby to cure the ill Taste which is occasioned by some Kinds of Food of Cows. (London: 1761).

Dr Hales was very fond of blowing bubbles. The main essay in his book was about blowing air through seawater as it was being distilled to make freshwater for seamen. He also argued that the process of blowing air through milk which had been tainted through cows eating wild garlic or turnips, would get rid of the strong unwanted flavours, especially if the milk was heated during the process. 

The final essay in this book is where Hales published his design for blowing air through milk

In the essay he illustrates the mechanism for blowing the air through the milk. When I saw his engraved plate (below), I realised that it fitted the description in Hartshorne's quotation exactly. However, syllabub does not even get a mention in Hale's essay. Now that I knew the machine was the invention of a Dr Hales rather than a Dr Hayles, I decided to track down Hartshorne's source and found it very quickly. In 1905, Hartshorne edited the letters of the Rev. Edmund Pyle, chaplain in ordinary to King George II between 1729-1763,  in a book called Memoirs of a Royal Chaplain. In it I found a letter which Pyle had written to his friend Samuel Kerrich, a Norfolk vicar. When I read the text of the letter, I realised that Hartshorne had abridged it in Old English Glasses, leaving out a critical passage which indicated that the perforated box was in fact round ('like a box for a Great Seal').

Originally designed for ridding tainted milk of the unpleasant flavours of wild garlic and turnips, Hales's  engine was used in the kitchens of Kensington Palace for making whipped syllabub. A pair of bellows was inserted into the tube at the top.

When I made my machine, I assumed that the box at the lower end of the syllabub engine was cuboid. Although my engine worked perfectly, blowing up ' cream into syllabub, with great exhibition' it looked pretty different to Hales's device for blowing air through tainted milk. Here is the full text of Pyle's letter,

Dear Sir,                                              "Novr 21 1758.

" I have a favour of yours to acknowledge. There is a great dearth of literary news. The only articles, of that sort, that I know of, are: That Dr. Hales hath actually published; what has been some time talked of; a tube of tin, with a box, of the same, at the lower end of it, (like a box for a Great Seal,) that is full of very small holes. This engine, with the help of a pair of bellows, blows up cream into syllabub, with great expedition. This complex machine has already procured the Dr. the blessing of the housekeeper of this palace, and of all such as she is, in the present generation, (who know the time & labour required to whip this sort of geer: and will cause his memory to be had in reverence, all housekeepers, in the generations that are yet for to come."

The mention by Pyle of 'the housekeeper of this palace' is very interesting. This was Kensington Palace where Pyle was chaplain. Hales too had strong royal connections. By the middle of the eighteenth century he had become a well known public figure. So much so that Prince Frederick of Wales, the heir to the throne, frequently drove from his palace at Kew to observe the doctor's curious experiments at his laboratory in Teddington. Frederick's wife Princess Augusta often accompanied him on these excursions and became very fond of Dr Hales. When Frederick died in 1751, Hales was appointed Clerk of the Closet to the Princess Dowager. In the summer he frequently visited the princess at Kew and advised her on her gardens and greenhouses. He also thought up amusements for the princess and her children, including the Prince of Wales, who would eventually become King George III. One of these diversions was making pictures out of rare dried sea mosses (species of seaweed with a feathery appearance) sent to Hales by a fellow botanist. One day, probably in 1758, at Leicester House, the princess's winter residence, he amused the royal children by making syllabub with an 'ingenious machine'. This was the year which Pyle wrote his letter referring to the published design. So it looks like the Doctor brought his invention to Leicester House just to give the children a good laugh. But it must have been spotted by the housekeeper of Kensington Palace who put it to serious use.

Frederick Prince of Wales with his sisters in front of Kew Palace by Philip Mercier 1733.

Frederick's wife Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha (1719-1772), oil on canvas by Charles Philips. In 1751 Dr Hales was appointed the princess's Clerk to the Closet.

The highly inventive Dr Hales was very fond of experimenting with air. He placed this windmill on the roof of Newgate prison to ventilate the airless cells below. It was a huge success. Hales's brother William had died of gaol fever in Newgate. He was also celebrated for designing ventilation systems for ships and advocated fumigating biscuit and other sea stores with sulphur dioxide to kill weevils and other insects. Another of Hale's remarkable inventions was a system of salting whole carcasses of meat by pumping saline solution through the animals' blood vessels. 

Kensington Palace where the royal housekeeper used Hales's syllabub engine.

Leicester House formerly on Leicester Square, the residence of Frederick Prince of Wales and Princess Augusta. It was here that Hales amused the royal children with his syllabub engine.

Now that I have found Hales's drawing, I am making a Mark II version of his syllabub engine which will be exactly like the original. Once it is completed I will post a video of it being used, which I hope you will find an amusing diversion. Despite the speed with which this device pumps up syllabub, it never seems to have caught on in England. However, at some time in the nineteenth century on the other side of the Atlantic in the Southern States, utensils which used a similar pumping action started to become popular for whipping up cream and syllabub. However, I suspect that these churns were invented without knowledge of Hales's device. Though strangely enough earlier in his career Hales was one of the original twenty-one trustees of Georgia in the early history of the colony. He also had strong connections with the Carolinas. And it was in the Southern States that these devices became popular. Coincidence? Almost certainly. 

A reproduction of  a nineteenth century American syllabub churn. Photo courtesy of John Chaney

Another view of the syllabub churn above. Photo courtesy of John Chaney

Tildens 1865 USA patent churn - with a turbine which whips up the cream when the cylinder is shaken

Whether making syllabub by milking a cow into a bowl, as in this romantic 19th century illustration, or by blowing air through the cream with an eccentric bellows operated engine, this bucolic activity seems to have entertained generations of children, including a few royal ones.

If you would like to know more about syllabub there are some other posts dealing with the subject on this blog -

Pumping up the Syllabub - 12 Feb 2012

Syllabub Revisited and Sugar Plumb Theories - 8 Feb 2012

Lady Rachel Fane's Syllabub -17 Dec 2011

Pumping up the Syllabub

To make whip syllabub the most common tool was a birch whisk used to excite a mixture of wine, lemon juice and cream into creating a layer of bubbles on top. 

Since this is the third posting on the subject, readers of this blog might get the impression that I have more than a passing interest in syllabub. You would be right. I started experimenting with old syllabub recipes nearly fifty years ago. I had my first go at making syllabub using the oft cited method of milking a cow into some sweetened cider when I was fourteen. It was a miserable failure. The milk curdled and made a terrible mess. What was I, or the cow doing wrong? I found the same thing happened when I tried recipes that called for warm milk to be poured from a great height into the mixture - resulting again in stringy and inedible curds.  In my early days of syllabub experimentation there were very few modern recipes. It was not until Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson started publishing some in the late 1960s that the British general public started becoming aware of what until then been an almost  totally extinct dish.

What a contrast that is to the situation today. Google the word and you will find a myriad modern recipes - champagne syllabub, turkish delight syllabub, amaretto syllabub, iced cappuccino syllabub, hogmanay syllabub, passionfruit syllabub etc. What I have noticed though is that nearly all of these contemporary versions are made by whisking whipping cream with the other ingredients until it sets into a uniform thick whip. This type, which seems to be the only one made in modern times, is derived from those revived recipes by Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson, which they based on what was once called solid syllabub. This sort, also known as everlasting syllabub, was technically a flavoured alcoholic whipped cream. After a while a small amount of liquid might form at the bottom of the syllabub glass, but generally this type consisted of a uniform creamy whip. 

A solid or everlasting syllabub in a panel moulded double handled syllabub glass of the mid -eighteenth century. This is the model for just about every modern syllabub. It is really a type of whipped cream

A glass salver set with ribbon jellies and solid syllabubs. Photo: Vicky Osborne.- courtesy Delomosne and Son.

As the bubbles rose they were skimmed off with a spoon

Another syllabub, older in origin than the solid kind, was the whip or whipped syllabub. If the very large number of surviving recipes is anything to go by, it seems to have been very popular, This was very different in nature to solid syllabub. It does not really seem to be understood by modern cooks. The cream/wine mixture was whipped in a large bowl, usually with a birch whisk, but chocolate mills were also used. As the bubbles rose they were skimmed off the surface and put on a sieve to drain overnight. 

The foam was allowed to drain over night until it turned into a much lighter and dryer froth

It is not as fiddly as it sounds and a very large amount of bubbly suds can be accumulated in a fairly short time. Interestingly a very old and ubiquitous rural name for a sieve was a sile or syell, commonly used in dairies for straining milk. Syllabubs were originally made in dairies rather than kitchens. In seeking for an origin for the word syllabub, the etymologists have complete ignored this Old Norse word. Above you can see a sile covered in bubbles - any thoughts?  Once the bubbles had drained thoroughly, which usually takes about twelve hours, an incredibly light,  rather dryish foam of a most ethereal texture is created. This was then floated on top of some wine or whey which had been poured into the syllabub glass. This is much lighter and of a completely different character to the modern version of the dish. The evidence points to the fact that the pan top syllabub glass was designed specifically for whip syllabub. The pan helps to support the foam above as below.

Whip syllabub floating on wine in an eighteenth century pan top glass 

Now all this whipping, whether with whisks or chocolate mills, especially when catering for a large company, was a lot of hard work. So a number of pieces of equipment were designed to make the process easier. The earliest of these was a syringe known as a wooden cow. These are first mentioned in the late seventeenth century. A lot of bubbles can be created by squirting air into the mix with one of these curious implements. They were similar to a device called a butter squirt, which could also be used to make syringe fritters. Syringes of this kind had various applications in the kitchen and dairy. I have never seen any English early modern period images of these things, but Bartolomeo Scappi in his Opera (Venezia: 1570) does illustrate a kitchen syringe. This is a woodcut version from the 1621 edition.

Choose your weapon. Birch whisk, chocolate mill, syllabub pumping engine or wooden cow?

A variation on the wooden cow was the 'syllabub pumping engine', which appeared in the first half of the eighteenth century -  

“Dr. Hayles hath actually published what has been for some time talked of, a tube of tin with a box of the same at the lower end of it...that is full of small holes. This engine, with the help of a pair of bellows, blows up cream into syllabub with great expedition. This complex machine has already procured the doctor the blessing of the housekeeper in this palace, and of all such as she in the present generation (who know the time and labour required to whip this sort of geer), and will cause his memory to be held in reverence by all housekeepers in the generations that are yet to come.” A. Hartshorne, Old English Glasses, (London and New York: 1897), p. 307.

I have reconstructed this 'engine' and it works very well, blowing 'up cream into syllabub with great expedition. I have had a love affair with this uniquely English dairy food most of my rather long life and have written three published papers on the subject. Syllabub has spawned its own unique material culture and I also collect both the tools which were once used to make it, as well the beautiful glasses that were designed for serving it. With this kind of long experience of the subject, it is always tempting to feel smug and consider oneself some kind of an expert. However, it is humbling to find out that in fact one really knows very little. I recently learned that in nineteenth century North America special mills called syllabub churns were manufactured to make solid syllabubs. After nearly fifty years of studying the subject I had never heard of them. As far as I know, there was never anything like these made in Britain, but I could be wrong. 

Below are some photographs of one of these churns, which according to one or two folk who have used them are incredibly effective. They work rather like a plunge butter churn. By pushing the shaft up and down the mixture gets thoroughly aereated. If there are any US readers of this post who have experience of these fascinating utensils, I would love to hear from you. Happy syllabub pumping everybody!

Syllabub Revisited and Sugar Plumb Theories

I recently bought a copy of James Gilray's satirical cartoon Heroes recruiting at Kelseys (1798) which is in its original uncoloured state (see detail above). All the other copies I have seen of this print have at some time been painted over with watercolour, as below. This very interesting image shows two military officers sampling the delights of a London confectionery shop. A bonneted proprietress of ample proportions is walking towards them with a bobbin-stemmed salver set out with jelly glasses. These are heaped up with a creamy froth, which the officer on the right is spooning out of a fairly conventional jelly glass. Is this ice cream, or  something else? 

A small bobbin stemmed waiter with pan top syllabub glass - both second half of eighteenth century. Note how the spoon is perfectly visible through the clear white wine below the foam of the whip syllabub

If you could afford it, ice cream was very popular and common enough in 1790s London confectioners' shops. But close scrutiny of the detail of the uncoloured Gilray reproduced above, shows that a spoon is visible through a clear liquid sitting below the frothy head. This would indicate that the artist's original intentions were to depict a glass of whip syllabub rather than ice cream. Ice cream is opaque and the spoon would therefore be concealed. The water colourist who tinted the print below (probably at a later date) did not appreciate this and has filled in the glass with a uniform pink wash.  It is amazing how much can be learnt from such small details.

The other officer is holding a conical twist of paper filled with 'sugar plumbs'. What on earth were these? Well according to some authorities, such as television historian Ruth Goodman, food historian Sharon Cohen and many websites out there in cyberspace, sugar-plums were quite literally plums that had been preserved or coated with sugar. Well I am afraid that this is terribly lazy and inaccurate history, because it is just not true.

Let me explain. Many of us are now familiar with the term sugar-plum from Tchaikovsky's Dance of the Sugar-plum Fairy from the Nutcracker, first performed in St Petersburg in 1892. Tchaikovsky's original French name for this music was Danse de la fée dragée. Dragée is a word still used in France. It means a sugar-coated seed, or nut, not a sugar-coated plum. The Italian equivalent word is confetto, giving us the English comfit. So the literal meaning of Danse de la fée dragée was the Dance of the Sugar Comfit Fairy. However, in England comfits had been known by the nickname sugar-plums since at least the early seventeenth century, because they were the shape of a plum, not made with plums. The Dance of  the Sugar Plum Fairy was a more poetic translation and made perfect sense in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Nowadays, the term is so obsolete that even some self-styled historians, who are meant to study the past critically from primary sources have forgotten what it means.  But anyone who cares to look up sugar-plum in the OED will find the definition, 'A small round or oval sweetmeat, made of boiled sugar and variously flavoured and coloured; a comfit.' The definition is followed by many instances of its use. This is not to say that plums were not preserved with sugar. They were, but they were not called sugar plums in the past.  

There is a bit more on sugar-plums and comfits on my website, including explanations of how they were really made. Below are links to some sites which have misunderstood the true nature of these interesting sweeties. If you would like to learn how to make real sugar plums, come to my Historic Food Sugar and Confectionery Course.

  

Ruth Goodman's video of "sugar plum" making
Sharon Cohen's essay on "sugar plums"
Another website which tells you how to make 'sugar plums'

Lady Rachel Fane's Syllabub

Glass collector Tim Udall holding an eighteenth century spouted syllabub glass.

Earlier this year I contributed an essay to an exhibition catalogue of English dessert glass published by Delomosne and Sons, Britain's leading dealer in antique glass. The wonderful assemblage of glass described in the catalogue was put together over a lifetime of avid collecting and outstanding research by Mr Tim Udall. All items were for sale at the exhibition and most found buyers very quickly. I was delighted to offer a new home to an eighteenth century spouted syllabub glass and a spectacular dessert tree or glass epergne. An online version of the fully illustrated catalogue is available at Delomosne's website and I have inserted a link to it at the end of this posting. You can also order a copy of the catalogue from the site. Please take a look at it - the quality of this collection is outstanding. Mr Udall's own excellent essays on dessert glass, written for the Journal of the Glass Circle in the early 1980s, set the standard for scholarship in this fascinating area of material culture and I am indebted to him for many insights and leads in my own research on syllabub and jelly glasses.


The photograph above shows Mr Udall holding a glass spout pot very similar to the one I bought from his collection. These glasses have a superficial resemblance to a teapot, but the spout was used for sucking, not pouring - rather like a kind of proto-drinking straw. Early modern period syllabubs had two layers - a stratum of foam or curd on top and a pool of strong alcoholic liquid nestling below. The froth was eaten with a spoon and the pungent liquor sucked through that delicate spout. Surviving examples of these fragile vessels are rare and references to them in early recipes books even rarer. However, they do get a brief mention by the seventeenth century gallant and alchemist Sir Kenelm Digby in a recipe in his collection The Closet etc. (London: 1670). The recipe  is attributed by Digby to Rachel Fane, Countess of Middlesex, who “makes syllabubs for little glasses with spouts.” Lady Middlesex instructs us “to put into each glass a sprig of Rosemary a little bruised.” During the course of the eighteenth century syllabub glasses started to lose their spouts and the dish was more usually served in pan top glasses like that illustrated below. The function of the pan top was to support the foam, which was spooned over the wine or whey in the lower part of the glass. 

Left.  An eighteenth century pan top whipt syllabub glass containing a whip syllabub. The pan top supports the frothy syllabub very effectively above the sweet wine below. Right. An earlier spouted glass containing a syllabub made from the recipe by Lady Middlesex. 

Lady Rachel Fane, Dowager Countess of Bath and Countess of Middlesex (1603-1680).
Engraving by Pierre Lombart (after Van Dyck) c.1660.

Lady Middlesex was an attractive, highly educated woman, who wrote some remarkably sophisticated masques while still in her teens. She was also the author of a manuscript collection of recipes, including one for a dish called 'pets', an early form of meringue. Rachel's first husband, Sir Henry Bourchier, the Earl of Bath, died in 1654 and she married Lionel Cranfield, the third Earl of Middlesex six months later in 1655. This second marriage was a disaster, as Cranfield turned out to be a monster. According to Lady Rachel Newport he sold all of Rachel's books as well as her silver and household stuff and spent the money on 'rioting and play'.  Not surprisingly the couple separated shortly after the wedding. Below is Rachel's syllabub recipe as quoted by Digby. I always enjoy putting a face to a recipe. 

There is a particularly fine miniature of Rachel by David des Granges in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge - see it at this link.

18th Century Glasses for the Dessert. The Tim Udall Collection

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Read more about syllabubs on my website at this page.