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Tipsy Bread
Take a stale roll. Pare off the crust, and cut the crumb into rounds a quarter of an inch thick. Spread a little jam on each side of these, and pile them one upon the other in the centre of a glass dish. Sift powdered sugar thickly over them, and pour upon them as much sherry as they will absorb. Blanch two or three ounces of sweet almonds, cut them into shreds, and stick them all over the surface of the bread. Pour a good custard round them, and set the dish aside until wanted. Tipsy bread should be made two or three hours before it is wanted.
A stripped-down trifle built on bread rather than sponge — an economy dish that depends entirely on the quality of the sherry and the custard. A few Victorian conventions need translating.
- The hinge: let it soak, but not drownPour on only as much sherry as the bread will actually take up, adding it in stages and waiting a moment between pours. Bread crumb collapses faster than sponge cake, and a pool of sherry in the bottom of the dish turns the base layer to paste.
- "A stale roll"A day-old plain white roll with a close crumb — a brioche or milk roll works well, an airy ciabatta does not. The staleness is functional: fresh crumb tears when sliced thin and turns to mush on contact with the wine. Leave the roll uncovered overnight.
- Powdered sugarIn British books of this period this generally means sugar pounded fine from a loaf — closest to caster (superfine) sugar, rather than the cornflour-cut confectioners' sugar sold as "powdered" in the United States. Either will dissolve into the sherry, but caster gives a cleaner finish.
- SherryAn oloroso or amontillado suits the jam and almonds better than a dry fino. The recipe sets no quantity: add it a little at a time until the pile will take no more. None of it is cooked off, so this is an adult dessert.
- Blanching the almondsTwo or three ounces is 55-85 g. Pour boiling water over whole almonds, stand two minutes, drain, and the skins slip off under thumb pressure. Shred them lengthways while still damp — dried blanched almonds split and crumble.
- "A good custard"A proper stirred custard: roughly 500 ml (2 cups) milk or single cream with 4-6 egg yolks and 50 g sugar, cooked over low heat to about 82C/180F, until it coats the back of a spoon. Let it cool to lukewarm before pouring, or it will soften the almonds and slump the tower.
- Setting aside"Until wanted" meant a cool larder. Refrigerate, loosely covered, and give it the full two to three hours the recipe asks for, so the sherry works through to the middle of the pile.
- YieldOne roll makes a small dessert — figure on a few servings — presented in a shallow glass dish as the recipe directs, so the layers show. Scale by making a second stack alongside rather than a taller one.
Tipsy bread is the thrifty cousin of tipsy cake, a dish that appears in English cookery books from the later eighteenth century onward: sponge or biscuit soaked in wine, stuck with almond spikes, and flooded with custard. Trifle itself is the older form, and the two dishes overlap closely. Almond-spiked puddings were also served under the name almond hedgehog, and a Scottish relative, tipsy laird, is still made with whisky or Drambuie. Here a stale roll stands in for the cake, turning a leftover into a company dessert. Sherry was widely drunk in Victorian Britain, which is part of why so many puddings of the period taste of it.