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Dessert

Clinton Place Trifle

A layered dessert of sponge cake, custard, strawberries, wine, and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,157 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Clinton Place Trifle

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble the trifle

  1. Take a glass dish holding about 3 pints and line it with slices of sponge cake.

  2. Cover the cake with a thin layer of boiled custard.

  3. Add a layer of strawberries.

  4. Repeat with another layer of cake, custard, and fruit.

  5. Cover with more cake.

  6. Pour the wine over the entire dish.

Top with meringue

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  2. Add sugar and lemon juice to the egg whites.

  3. Spread the egg mixture in peaks over the entire dish.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Wine + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sponge cake
Forms the base layers that soak up custard and wine and give the trifle its structure.
Boiled custard
Adds creamy moisture and richness between the cake and fruit layers.
Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks to form the airy meringue topping.
Preserved strawberries
Add fruity sweetness and acidity that cut through the rich custard.
Wine
Moistens and flavours the sponge cake layers.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites must be whipped until they hold firm peaks to trap air and form a stable meringue. Under-whipped whites stay runny and slump into the custard, while over-whipped whites turn grainy and dry.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (wine, sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More trifle recipes

Apple 48Gooseberry 43Lemon 18Swiss Cream 17Brandy 13Grape 12 See all 115 →

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