Trifle, Indian
INGREDIENTS for good-sized dish.-1 quart of milk, the rind of 1/2 large lemon, sugar to taste, 5 heaped tablespoonfuls of rice-flour, 1 oz. of sweet almonds, pint of custard. AVERAGE COST, 1s.
Boil the milk and lemon-rind together until the former is well flavoured; take out the lemon-rind, and stir in the rice-flour, which should first be moistened with cold milk, and add sufficient loaf sugar to sweeten it nicely. Boil gently for about 5 minutes, and keep the mixture stirred; take it off the fire, let it cool a little, and pour it into a glass dish. When cold, cut the rice out in the form of a star, or any other shape that may be preferred; take out the spare rice, and fill the space with boiled custard. Blanch and cut the almonds into strips; stick them over the trifle, and garnish it with pieces of brightcoloured jelly, or preserved fruits, or candied citron. TIME.- hour to simmer the milk, 5 minutes after the rice is added. SEASONABLE at any time.
A moulded ground-rice pudding set in a glass dish, cut open and the cavity filled with custard. Nothing here is difficult, but the recipe depends entirely on the rice mixture setting firm enough to hold a cut edge.
- Missing fractionsThe digitised text has dropped several fractions. "pint of custard" is probably half a pint (about 10 fl oz), and "TIME.- hour to simmer the milk" is missing a fraction too — half or a quarter of an hour — so judge by flavour rather than the clock. Where a figure is genuinely lost, treat it as a guide, not a measurement.
- Rice-flourSold today as rice flour or ground rice; the coarser ground rice gives the firmer, slightly grainy set Mrs Beeton expects. Five heaped tablespoons to a quart of milk is a stiff blancmange consistency, which is the point — a soft set will not take a clean cut.
- Slaking the flourMoistening the rice flour with cold milk before it goes into the hot pan is the hinge of the recipe. Tipped in dry it seizes into lumps that will not stir out, and the surface of the set pudding will be pitted.
- Loaf sugarRefined sugar sold in a cone and broken off in lumps. Ordinary granulated or caster sugar is the direct equivalent; about 3 to 4 tablespoons suits a quart of milk here.
- Lemon rindPare it in wide strips with a peeler and take no white pith, which turns bitter over a long infusion. Remove the rind before the flour goes in or you will trap it in the set.
- Sweet almondsSimply ordinary almonds — the distinction is from bitter almonds, which older books also list and which are rarely available to home cooks now. Blanch in boiling water for a minute, slip the skins, then cut lengthways into spikes.
- Setting and cuttingPour into the glass dish to a depth of about two inches and chill several hours until fully firm. Cut the star with the tip of a small knife, lift the pieces out with a spoon, and let the cavity chill again before adding cold custard so the two do not bleed together.
- The custardA boiled egg custard — milk, egg yolks, sugar — cooked to a coating consistency and cooled before it is poured in. Cook it to at least 160F/71C, and if it looks like curdling, strain it while warm.
- YieldA quart of milk plus custard fills a large glass bowl and serves six to eight. It must be made the day before, or at least early in the morning.
Despite the name, this has no evident connection to India; why the dish carries the name is not documented. What sets it apart from an English trifle is the absence of the two things that define one: no sponge cake or macaroons and no wine or sherry soaking. In their place is a firm ground-rice mould, a technique borrowed from the family of blancmanges and flummeries that filled the cold-sweet chapters of nineteenth-century cookery books, cut open in the shape of a star and filled with custard for effect. Rice flour was cheap, kept indefinitely in the storecupboard and set reliably without gelatine or isinglass. The garnish of bright jelly, preserved fruit or candied citron is characteristic of the period's taste for a sweet that looked ornamental in glass on the sideboard.