Holiday seasons are marked as much for me by memories of the flavors and smells of my childhood as by the food and drink I celebrate with now. A friend wrote recently to share her memory of syllabub, an old concoction that could serve equally well as dessert or beverage.

She recalled visiting her grandmother in Sparta, Ga., where her grandmother's unmarried sisters would also gather for the holidays and drink a glass of syllabub. These were women who otherwise rarely drank an alcoholic beverage. But many nondrinking households kept a bit of brandy for a cold or sherry for the fruitcake, and a glass of syllabub was also considered acceptable at holidays and other occasions.

Syllabub is basically a mixture of wine and cream, preferably frothy. In its thicker forms (made with cream rather than milk), it can serve as a topping for trifle, cakes, cookies or fruit. It can also be eaten on its own, and seems to have been an early version of ice cream. When the consistency leans more toward milk than cream, syllabub is sipped from a glass as a beverage.

Traditionally, a syllabub froth was produced quite simply. Instead of using her usual pail, the milkmaid milked the cow directly into a bowl of wine or sherry, took it directly inside and served the mixture still warm. For those without a cow on the property, vigorous stirring had to suffice.

Syllabub is thought to have originated in England several centuries ago, but it's not hard to imagine similar combinations popping up in many areas where people enjoyed both cow's milk and wine or ale.

And it surely didn't take long for variations to appear. Sugar, spices, lemons, herbs and beaten egg whites were all used to elaborate on the basic formula. The name is thought to have originated in Elizabethan times, perhaps from a combination of sille, a name for a French wine often used in the mixture, and bub, or "bubbling drink."

Old recipe books are likely to include a version of syllabub, many of them evocative of earlier eras when cows lived nearby, when no one counted calories or cholesterol and cooks were encouraged to be creative. Rather than precise instructions, recipes often simply recommended adding ingredients "to taste."

One example comes from a 1956 edition of Vermont History, edited by Leon W. Dean, president, Green Mountain Folklore Society. Credited to Gladys A. Gallup of Springfield, Vt., it gives simple, direct instructions for syllabub:

"Take a china or earthenware bowl of any size, nearly half full of cider (if sour, it is of no consequence), sweeten to taste with coarse brown sugar. Grate nutmeg and cinnamon to taste, then send the bowl to the cow to be milked on till quite full of froth. A better syllabub for company is made of port wine and cider mixed, sweetened with white sugar and spice to taste."

The cider option calls to mind another friend's experience, which probably mirrors that of many syllabub experimenters over the centuries. A few years ago, she found she liked the taste of apple cider combined with good, thick buttermilk. Thinking she had invented something new, she mentioned it to a German friend who informed her, "We drink that all the time." Then she told her mother and finally learned it already had a name: syllabub.

So if you're feeling an urge to hark back over the years to an almost-forgotten tradition, raise a glass of syllabub this holiday season.

Syllabub Shortcut

Serves 12

1 quart heavy cream

1/2 pint sweet milk

1/2 pint sherry wine

sugar to taste

Whisk ingredients together.

- "Charleston Receipts," collected by the Junior League of Charleston, S.C. (Charleston Receipts, 1995)