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Trifle, Swiss
Take two ounces each of macaroons and ratafias; crumble them, put them at the bottom of a glass dish, and then pour over them two table-spoonfuls of brandy. Flavour a pint of cream by soaking the thin rind of a fresh lemon and a quarter of an inch of stick cinnamon: then lift them out, sweeten the cream, and stir into it a thin batter made of four tea-spoonfuls of ground rice, or, if preferred, fine flour mixed smoothly with a little cold milk. Stir this mixture over a gentle fire until it boils, and continue to simmer it, stirring unceasingly for four minutes. Pour it out, let it get cold, then add gradually the strained juice of two fresh lemons. Spread the custard over the biscuits, and stick blanched and sliced almonds over the surface. This trifle should be made some hours before it is wanted. Time, four minutes to stir the custard over the fire after it has boiled. Probable cost, 2s. 4d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A set cream rather than a whipped one: the thickening is done with rice flour on the stove, and the lemon juice goes in only after the mixture is completely cold. That order is the whole recipe.
- Add the lemon juice coldThe acid from two lemons will split a hot dairy mixture on contact. Let the thickened cream cool to room temperature or below, then trickle the strained juice in a little at a time, stirring, so it thickens further without curdling.
- Ratafias and macaroonsBoth are small almond biscuits, dry and crisp; ratafias are the little button-sized ones. Amaretti, or amaretti plus crisp almond macaroons, are the closest thing on a modern shelf. Coconut macaroons are a different biscuit entirely and will not work here.
- A pint of creamAn imperial pint is 20 fl oz, about 2 1/2 US cups. Single cream or half-and-half is the right richness; double or heavy cream plus starch and acid becomes stodgy.
- Ground riceA rice meal, close to rice flour though traditionally milled a little coarser. Four teaspoons for a pint is a light set. Slake it smooth in a little cold milk before it meets the hot cream, as the recipe says, or it will go lumpy.
- SweeteningNo quantity is given. Two to three tablespoons of caster sugar suits a pint, tasted before the lemon goes in and adjusted after, since the juice will make it read sharper.
- Infusing the creamWarm the cream with the lemon rind (pared thin, no white pith) and the cinnamon and hold it off the boil to steep, then lift them out before going on, as the recipe directs. No steeping time is given; long contact, especially if any pith is attached, risks bitterness.
- "Simmer four minutes"This is starch cookery, not custard: it must actually boil and then be held bubbling for the full four minutes, stirring without stop, or the rice flour tastes raw and the mixture thins as it cools.
- Assembly and timingThe brandy-soaked biscuits go in first, the cold cream over them. Several hours in the refrigerator is not optional; it is what softens the biscuits into a base. Scatter the sliced blanched almonds just before serving so they stay crisp. Serves four to five.
This one earns the name "Swiss" loosely, and probably for the lemon-and-cinnamon cream rather than any Swiss original. What sets it apart from the familiar English trifle is that there is no whipped syllabub top and no custard of eggs: the cream is set with rice flour and then sharpened with lemon juice, a technique closer to a flummery or a lemon cream than to the sponge-and-sherry construction most readers picture. Ratafia biscuits, generally taken to be named for the almond-flavoured cordial, were a common grocer's line in the nineteenth century and were used as a lining for charlottes and trifles; they have largely been displaced by Italian amaretti. The "probable cost, 2s. 4d." is characteristic of Cassell's, which priced its dishes so a household could budget a dinner in advance.