Pear Trifle
Cook pears as for Pear Bread Pudding and fill baking dish with layers of sponge cake sprinkled with cocoanut, then the pears, etc., pouring over the whole the yolks of three eggs whipped with a half cup of sugar. Bake till brown, then add a meringue of the whites of the eggs; replace in oven till well coloured and serve when cold.
A late-Victorian baked trifle that leans on a companion recipe for its fruit. Read it as an assembly job: stewed pears, stale sponge, a thin yolk custard poured over, then a meringue lid.
- The missing first step"Cook pears as for Pear Bread Pudding" refers to a companion recipe not reproduced here. It most likely involves pears peeled, cored and stewed gently until tender but still holding shape; check the original entry if you have it. Whatever the method, drain them well — syrup left clinging will make the sponge collapse into paste.
- The hinge: don't drown the cakeThree yolks beaten with half a cup of sugar is a very small amount of liquid for a full baking dish. It will soak the top layers and set rather than filling the dish as a custard. Resist adding milk or cream unless you want a proper baked custard, in which case bake it in a water bath.
- CocoanutIn this period "cocoanut" most often meant desiccated (dried, finely shredded) coconut, usually unsweetened. Modern sweetened flake is wetter and much sweeter; use less sugar in the yolks if that is all you have.
- Sponge cakeDay-old plain sponge or ladyfingers, sliced thin. Fresh cake, and certainly modern oil-based cake, turns gluey. Any dry sponge-type cake or Madeira will do.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe gives none: it says only "bake till brown" and later "till well coloured." As a modern starting point, a moderate oven (around 325-350F) until the yolk mixture is set and the surface has taken colour, then a short spell for the meringue, watching it rather than timing it.
- The meringueWhip the three whites to soft peaks with about 6 tablespoons of sugar — the original assumes the cook knows this. Spread it so it touches the dish rim all round, which stops it shrinking away as it cools.
- Serve when coldThis is not optional advice. Warm, the yolk layer is loose and the pears slump; cold, the whole thing slices. Chill several hours, though meringue softens after a day, so eat it the same day.
- YieldA dish built on three eggs and one batch of stewed pears will serve roughly six to eight, depending on the size of the baking dish.
Trifle is a name that has covered a shifting range of sweets: the earliest English trifles were flavoured thickened creams, and the layered cake-and-wine form emerged later, while by the nineteenth century the word had loosened enough to cover baked versions like this one, closer to a queen of puddings than to the sherry-soaked cream trifle of a modern Christmas table. The construction is thoroughly economical: stale sponge, fruit that has already been cooked for another dish, and a single trio of eggs split so the yolks bind the bottom and the whites cap the top, with nothing wasted. Desiccated coconut was a fashionable sprinkling in books of this period and turns up scattered through fruit puddings much as chopped nuts do now. A single-fruit chapter like "The Pear" explains the recipe's casual reliance on an earlier pear entry rather than repeating the instructions.