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Gooseberry Trifle
Cut a quarter of a pound of Savoy cakes (see SAVOY CAKES) into thin slices, and place them at the bottom of a deep glass dish. Pour over them a little sherry, brandy, or whiskey, and let them soak until soft. Boil half a pint of water with a pound of loaf sugar for ten minutes. Put in a pint and a half of green gooseberries, picked, washed, and drained. Let them boil till they are tender, but unbroken, and, when cool, place them on the Savoy cake. Make a pint and half of good plain custard, nicely flavoured with lemon or vanilla. Pour it over the gooseberries, and ornament with a little whipped cream, or the beaten white of egg. Time, about an hour and a half to prepare. This dish is better made three or four hours before it is wanted. Sufficient for a supper dish for six or eight persons. Probable cost, about 1s. 8d., exclusive of the wine or brandy.
A straightforward layered trifle whose only real difficulty is the fruit: green gooseberries are hard to find and the syrup here is sweet enough to matter. Everything else is a matter of translating Victorian volumes and vessels.
- Savoy cakesA Savoy cake is a light sponge baked in a mould or as fingers; the nearest supermarket equivalent is savoiardi or ladyfingers, about 4 oz (115 g). Sponge cake cut into thin slices works equally well, and stale is better than fresh, since it drinks the spirit without collapsing.
- Loaf sugarLoaf sugar was refined sugar broken from a cone and had to be nipped or crushed before use. Ordinary granulated sugar is the direct substitute, weight for weight: 1 lb (450 g).
- The fruit measureA pint and a half of gooseberries is a volume, not a weight — roughly 1 lb 2 oz to 1 lb 4 oz (500-560 g) of topped-and-tailed berries. Green means underripe and firm, which is what holds them whole in the syrup.
- Poaching the gooseberriesThis is the hinge. Half a pint (10 fl oz, about 1 1/4 US cups) of water with a pound of sugar gives a heavy syrup that draws water out of the fruit and helps the skins hold. The recipe says to let them boil till tender but unbroken; in practice a bare simmer, pulling the pan off the heat as the berries turn translucent, is safer, as a rolling boil bursts them and you lose the layer to mush.
- SweetnessGreen gooseberries are aggressively sour, which is why the syrup is so heavy. If your berries are riper, or you are using frozen ones, cut the sugar to about 12 oz (340 g) or the finished trifle will be cloying. Drain the berries before layering and keep the surplus syrup for another use.
- The custardA pint and a half is 30 fl oz, about 3 3/4 US cups. For a stirred egg custard, use about 6 egg yolks to that volume of milk or half milk, half cream, with 2-3 oz sugar, and take it to 175-180F (80-82C) -- thick enough to coat a spoon and no further. Cool it before pouring, or it will melt the fruit layer into the sponge.
- Beaten egg whiteThe alternative topping is uncooked whipped egg white. If you go that route rather than whipped cream, use pasteurised whites; a raw meringue also weeps within an hour or two, so whipped cream is the more reliable finish.
- Timing and yieldThe instruction to make it three or four hours ahead is sound — chilled, the sponge and custard set into each other. Serves six to eight as written. The "probable cost, about 1s. 8d." is a Victorian retail price and belongs to the book's habit of costing every dish for household budgeting.
Trifle began in the sixteenth century as little more than sweetened, flavoured cream, and only acquired its layers of soaked sponge, fruit and custard over the following two hundred years; by the time Cassell's was compiled in the later nineteenth century, the layered form was standard enough that a dictionary of cookery could list numerous variations by fruit. Gooseberries were one of the great British garden fruits of the period -- cheap, prolific, ripening in early summer, and the object of competitive growing clubs in the industrial north, where prize berries were weighed to a fraction of a dram. Green, unripe gooseberries were valued in the kitchen for their acidity, which is one reason Victorian gooseberry recipes are so often built around a heavy sugar syrup. The instruction to soak the sponge in sherry, brandy or whiskey, and the note that the cost excludes the spirit, suggest a book written for households where the store cupboard varied and the housekeeper was expected to account closely for expense.