Home › The Principles of Cookery › TRIFLE (another way) (Whip a pint of cream the day)
TRIFLE (another way) (Whip a pint of cream the day)
Whip a pint of cream the day before it is wanted, according to the directions given in the last recipe; as the froth rises lay it on a reversed sieve to drain. Take two dozen finger biscuits; spread a little raspberry jam on the flat side of twelve of them, and lay the other twelve upon them. Arrange these round a trifle-dish, put a quarter of a pound of macaroni, a quarter of a pound of ratafias, and four penny sponge-cakes at the bottom of the dish; pour over them a glassful of sherry or Madeira and a glassful of brandy, and let them soak till they have absorbed all the liquor. Pour a pint of rich cold custard over the soaked biscuits, and pile the whipped cream on the top. The custard may be made with a pint of milk, the well-beaten yolks of eight eggs, a table-spoonful of brandy, and any flavouring that may be preferred. Time, twenty-four hours to drain the whipped cream; two hours to soak the biscuits; ten minutes to thicken the custard. Probable cost, exclusive of the wine and spirit, 4s. 10d. Sufficient for one centre dish.
A late-Victorian trifle built on soaked biscuits rather than cake alone, with a yolk-heavy custard and a cream whipped and drained a full day ahead. Two of the ingredient names will mislead a modern reader.
- "Macaroni" means macaroonsA quarter-pound of pasta at the bottom of a trifle makes no sense; the word almost certainly stands for macaroons — the small, chewy almond kind, not the coconut sort. Ratafias are the same idea in miniature: little almond biscuits, once flavoured with bitter almond, now usually made with almond extract.
- The biscuits"Finger biscuits" are sponge fingers, sold as ladyfingers or boudoir biscuits; two dozen makes twelve jam sandwiches to stand round the dish. "Four penny sponge-cakes" are four small individual sponges sold at a penny each, not fourpence worth of one cake.
- A glassfulA Victorian wine glass runs about 2 to 2½ fl oz, so figure a scant quarter-cup each of sherry and brandy. The measure is genuinely loose in the period; taste the soaked biscuits before adding more.
- Draining the whipped creamThe overnight drain on an inverted sieve let the skimmed froth shed its liquid. Modern double or heavy cream at 36–48 percent fat whipped to soft peaks holds perfectly well without it; if you follow the original, line the sieve with muslin and keep it refrigerated the whole time.
- The custard is the hingeEight yolks to a pint of milk is very rich and will scramble if hurried. Cook over low heat or a water bath, stirring constantly, until it coats the back of a spoon at about 175–180°F, then strain and cool at once. It should never approach a simmer.
- Assembly and chillingSoak the biscuits two hours, pour the custard over cold, and chill the assembled dish before piling on the cream. Adding cream to a warm custard collapses it.
- Yield"One centre dish" is a large footed trifle bowl for a dinner table — perhaps eight to ten servings, though the recipe gives no number. The stated cost of 4s 10d, excluding wine and spirit, marks this as a special-occasion dish.
Trifle began in the sixteenth century as something much plainer: a dish of thick cream flavoured with sugar and rosewater, closer to what later cooks called a fool. The sponge, the wine and the custard accumulated over the following two hundred years, and by the time Cassell's was compiled in the 1870s the layered form here ozy soaked biscuits, boozy liquor, egg custard, whipped cream an English kitchens, though it was one form among many rather than a settled standard, with the sherry or Madeira reflecting the fortified wines that dominated British trade with Iberia and the Atlantic islands. The ratafia biscuit takes its name from the almond-flavoured cordial of the same name, which is sometimes said to derive from a French ratafia drunk to ratify an agreement, though the etymology is disputed. Cassell's places this among its "another way" variants, a sign of how many household versions of the dish were circulating; the itemised cost in shillings and pence was a standard feature of the book, written for a middle-class mistress budgeting a dinner rather than a professional kitchen.