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Temperance Tidbits
Moisten with lemon-juice enough stale ladyfingers or thin slices of stale sponge-cake to well cover the bottom of a glass dish holding a quart.
Make a soft custard by scalding two cups of milk and pouring it slowly upon two beaten egg yolks, mixed with three tablespoonfuls of sugar, one teaspoonful of butter, and a little salt. Cook in a double boiler until thickened. Strain, and when
A trifle in all but name, built on stale cake and a stirred custard. The recipe as printed here breaks off mid-instruction, so the finish has to be inferred from standard practice of the period.
- The custard is the hingeTwo yolks to two cups of milk is a thin, pourable custard that thickens somewhere around 170-180F. Hold it in the double boiler, stir constantly, and pull it the moment it coats a spoon; pushed much hotter the yolk proteins tighten and the mixture is liable to curdle.
- Straining is not optionalThe instruction to strain catches the inevitable threads of set egg and any skin from the scalded milk. Pour it through a fine sieve into a cold bowl straight off the heat, which also stops the cooking.
- The missing endingThe page cuts off at "and when" — the likely continuation is that the custard was cooled and poured over the cake, then left to chill until the cake had softened and the custard set. Some period recipes of this type finish with a meringue made from the leftover whites, or with sweetened whipped cream, but the text here does not say.
- Vessel and yieldA quart glass dish, meaning a serving bowl of about 4 cups. It serves four to six as written.
- Lemon-juice in place of wineSherry or Madeira is the traditional soak for trifle cake. Under the temperance rule of this chapter, lemon juice does the same job of loosening dry crumb and cutting the sweetness. Moisten rather than soak, as the recipe says, or the base turns to paste.
- Ladyfingers and spongeDry Italian-style savoiardi work better than the soft supermarket sort, which collapse. Any plain, fat-free sponge or an unfrosted pound cake slice will serve; the recipe exists precisely to use cake that has gone dry.
Cake soaked in liquid and covered with custard is the English trifle, in print since the sixteenth century and by the nineteenth century a fixture of American cookbooks as well. What marks this version is the chapter it sits in: "Temperance Tidbits" belongs to the long stretch between the 1870s and Prohibition when organized temperance societies made alcohol-free versions of standard dishes a point of household principle, and lemon juice, fruit syrup or strong coffee stood in for the sherry a trifle normally demanded.