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TRIFLE (another way) (Whipped cream which is laid)
The whipped cream which is laid over the top of a trifle should be made the day before it is wanted, as then it will be much firmer. Rub the rind of a large fresh lemon with two or three lumps of sugar till all the yellow part is taken off, then add a little more sugar to make up the quantity to three ounces, and crush it to powder. Warm a pint of cream, and stir the sugar in this till it is dissolved. Add a glassful of sherry, a tea-spoonful of the juice of the lemon, a table-spoonful of brandy, and the whites of two eggs, which have been whisked separately to a firm froth. Mill or whip the mixture in a cool place, and as the froth rises take it off, and place it on an inverted sieve to drain. Continue whisking until the whole of the cream is frothed, and set the sieve in a cool place, or upon ice, with a dish under it. The next day put four sponge biscuits, a quarter of a pound of macaroons, and a quarter of a pound of ratafias at the bottom of a trifle-dish, and pour over them a large wine-glassful of sherry, and another of brandy, or if preferred use two parts wine and one part spirit, and let the biscuits soak till they have absorbed all the liquor. Grate a little lemon-rind upon the cakes, and spread over them a layer of good jam, then cover them with a pint of nicely-flavoured, rich, cold custard. Pile the whipped cream lightly over the top as high as possible, and then garnish the dish with pink comfits, bright-coloured jelly, or flowers. Time, about one hour and a half to whip the cream. Probable cost, exclusive of the wine and spirit, 4s. 6d., if the custard be made with milk. Sufficient for one trifle.
This is a full Victorian trifle with a whipped syllabub topping rather than plain whipped cream, and the topping is where the problem lies. The rest of the construction is straightforward once the archaic measures and biscuits are translated.
- Why the cautionThe topping is raw egg white whisked into cream that is only warmed, never cooked, then left to drain on a sieve overnight and eaten the following day. Nothing in the process reaches a temperature that would deal with Salmonella, and the overnight stand (the recipe says a cool place, or upon ice) gives any contamination time to multiply. Sherry and brandy at this dilution are not a preservative. Use a current recipe for the topping if you want to build the dish.
- The custard is a separate matterThe pint of "nicely-flavoured, rich, cold custard" would have been a cooked egg custard, made and chilled beforehand. That element is conventional; it is the uncooked frothed cream laid over it that is the hazard.
- Imperial measuresA pint here is the imperial 20 fl oz, or 2.5 US cups. Three ounces of sugar is a scant half cup. The "glassful" and "large wine-glassful" are not standardised — a Victorian wine glass ran roughly 2 to 2.5 fl oz, but the book gives no definition, so treat the soaking liquor as a judgement call rather than a conversion.
- Mill or whipTo "mill" is to work the cream with a chocolate mill or a wooden froth stick spun between the palms, which aerates without turning the cream to butter. The hour and a half is not an exaggeration: the method deliberately skims off only the risen froth, returning to the bowl repeatedly.
- Ratafias and macaroonsRatafias are small, hard almond biscuits, traditionally flavoured with bitter almond; macaroons here are the almond kind, not the coconut or French sort. Amaretti are the closest thing on a modern shelf, and a quarter of a pound of each is about 115 g.
- Rubbing the lemon with sugarDragging sugar lumps across the zest pulls the oil straight into the sugar, which carries more perfume than grated rind and leaves no fibrous bits in the cream. It is worth doing wherever a recipe of this vintage calls for it.
- Pink comfitsComfits are sugar-panned seeds or nutmeg fragments — caraway comfits were the usual sort. Sugared almonds or hundreds-and-thousands stand in for the look.
- Yield and cost'Sufficient for one trifle'; the book gives no number of servings. The 4s 6d costing, exclusive of wine and spirit, marks this as a dish for a household with money to spend on cream, almonds and imported sherry.
A trifle in the sixteenth century was simply a thick flavoured cream; the soaked cakes, jam and custard accumulated over the following two hundred years until the assembled layered pudding of the Victorian table emerged. The topping described here is not modern whipped cream but a whipped syllabub — cream, wine, spirit, sugar and egg white beaten until the froth rises, skimmed off and drained on a sieve so that the watery wine falls away and what remains sets up stiff. That draining step is the whole reason the recipe insists on making it the day before. Cassell's, compiled for the aspiring middle-class household of the later nineteenth century, prices nearly everything, and the note that the cost is given "exclusive of the wine and spirit" reflects how widely wine prices varied.