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A Grand Trifle
The day before you wish to use it make two or three quarts of boiled custard (according to your needs); bake some thin sponge cakes as for jelly cake; whip some cream, with sugar and wine to flavor, and blanch and chop a pound of almonds.
Place in a large glass bowl first a layer of cake, then a thin layer of almonds, then a thick layer of whipped cream (one-half inch thick), then another cake, then more almonds, then more cream, then another cake. Pour over all this plenty of custard, then put on more whipped cream, as a float, and decorate it with small pieces of red jelly (apple, currant, or strawberry jelly), and slender leaves of preserved orange peel. This is delicious and highly ornamental, but some trouble to prepare. Not suitable for warm weather unless one has ice to keep all the parts in good order. Have plenty of the custard-the cake soaks it up, and should stand in it all night, if possible. -Mrs. Sallie Cotten, North Carolina.
A layered trifle that assumes you can bake a sponge, cook a stirred custard and whip cream without being told how. The only real technique note is that everything must be cold and stay cold.
- "Boiled custard" is a stirred custardDespite the name it is never boiled: milk or cream, sugar and egg yolks cooked over low heat or a water bath until it coats a spoon, around 175-180F. Two to three quarts is a great deal, but the cake genuinely absorbs it, and a thin custard soaks in better than a thick one.
- Sponge cake "as for jelly cake"Thin sheets of plain sponge, the kind baked flat and rolled or layered with jam. The recipe gives no oven heat or time; bake thin sheets in a moderate oven only until just set, as the layers are meant to be thin (the half-inch in the recipe refers to the cream, not the cake). A bought sponge or ladyfingers will stand in.
- The wineThe recipe says only "wine"; sherry or Madeira would be the usual candidates for a trifle of this kind. It goes into the cream, and may be sprinkled over the cake if you like. The alcohol is not cooked off anywhere in this dish, which matters if you are serving children.
- Blanching almondsPour boiling water over shelled almonds, let them stand a minute or two, and the skins slip off between finger and thumb. A pound is a lot; toasting them lightly after chopping improves the flavour and keeps them from going soft in the custard.
- Overnight soaking is the hingeOvernight soaking -- The recipe asks that the cake stand in the custard all night "if possible", and a thorough soak is what makes the dish; undersoaked trifle is dry cake with cream on it. Assemble well ahead and keep the bowl covered in the refrigerator.
- The warm-weather warningWritten when "ice" meant blocks of cut ice, whether in an icebox or packed around the dishes. A trifle built of cooked custard and whipped cream should not sit out; refrigerate it and return leftovers promptly, and do not let it stand at room temperature for more than a couple of hours.
- DecorationRed jelly means a bright, firm fruit jelly cut into small pieces, and preserved orange peel means candied peel sliced into thin strips. Both are for colour against the white cream; add them shortly before serving so they do not bleed.
- YieldThe recipe gives no number of servings; it tells you to make two or three quarts of custard "according to your needs", so it is plainly built for a large gathering. The same layering works in a smaller straight-sided dish with proportionally less custard.
Trifle is an English dish of long standing, its earliest printed forms being little more than thickened sweetened cream; the layered version with soaked cake, custard and a syllabub or whipped-cream float took its familiar shape in the eighteenth century and travelled to America with English cookery books. Community cookbooks of this kind gathered such set-pieces from named contributors as showpiece desserts for large gatherings, and the attribution here is to a Mrs. Sallie Cotten, in all likelihood Sallie Southall Cotten of North Carolina, a well-known clubwoman of the period, though the identification is an inference. The note about ice is the most revealing line on the page: a household without reliable refrigeration simply could not attempt several quarts of custard and a bowl of whipped cream in July, and the writer says so plainly rather than pretending otherwise.