Home › The Principles of Cookery › Whips
Whips
Take some small custard-glasses, half fill them with crumbled macaroons, ratafias, and sponge biscuits in equal proportions, pour upon them a little sherry mixed with a table-spoonful of brandy, spread a thin layer of raspberry jam upon them, and cover with custard. Heap some whipped cream on the top of the glasses, and serve.
An individual trifle in a glass, built in four layers. Nothing here is difficult, but the proportions assume Victorian biscuits and a stovetop custard rather than anything from a packet.
- Custard-glassesSmall stemmed glasses of roughly 4-5 fl oz (120-150 ml). Any small tumbler, sundae glass or wide-mouthed jar of that capacity works; the point is that the layers should be visible through the side.
- RatafiasTiny crisp almond biscuits, about the size of a marble, sold in Britain as ratafia biscuits and closely related to Italian amaretti. Historically they took their bitter edge from bitter almonds; modern ones use almond extract. Small amaretti, broken up, are the nearest substitute.
- MacaroonsAlmond macaroons, not coconut macaroons and not French macarons. A chewy almond biscuit is what is wanted, for contrast against the crisper ratafias.
- Sponge biscuitsSavoiardi or ladyfingers. Broken into pieces rather than left whole, since the glasses are only half filled with the mixture.
- How much wine"A little sherry" with a tablespoon of brandy; the recipe does not say whether this is meant for each glass or for the batch as a whole. The biscuits should be moistened rather than swamped -- too much and the crumb collapses into paste. A medium or cream sherry suits the sweetness better than a fino.
- The custardA pouring custard (crème anglaise) is intended: egg yolks, sugar and milk or cream cooked over gentle heat to about 80C/175F until it coats a spoon. It must be cooled before it goes on the jam, or it will melt into it and the layers will muddle.
- Assembly and restingThe recipe says only to heap the cream and serve, but chilling the filled glasses for an hour first lets the biscuits soften and the custard firm a little; add the whipped cream shortly before serving so it stays high.
- YieldThe quantities are left to the cook. As written this is a template; a custard made from two yolks and half a pint of milk would fill roughly four to six small glasses.
The name is the older one: a "whip" in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English cookery meant a dish built on whisked cream, often flavoured with wine and lemon and heaped over sweetened fruit or soaked cake in a glass. What is described here is essentially a single-serving trifle under a cap of cream — biscuit, spirit, jam, custard, cream, in that fixed order. The three biscuits called for are worth noticing as a snapshot of a well-stocked Victorian store cupboard: ratafias, almond macaroons and sponge fingers all appear repeatedly through the sweet courses of books of this kind.