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Dessert

To Make a Trifle

A layered dessert made with biscuits, custard, cream, and sweetmeats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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To Make a Trifle

Why it works: Biscuit and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 368 recipes. Both carry maltol, which smells caramel, sweet. The science ↓

To Make a Trifle

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble the base

  1. Place macaroons or biscuits in the bottom of a dish.

  2. Season with grated nutmeg and cover with white wine.

  3. Add various sweetmeats around the biscuits.

Make the custard

  1. Make a boiled custard.

  2. Let the custard cool.

  3. Pour the custard over the biscuits about 2 inches thick.

Top and serve

  1. Whip the cream with lemon rind, fine sugar, and egg whites until frothy.

  2. Drain the froth on a cloth.

  3. Place the drained froth on the trifle just before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Biscuit + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together368 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Biscuit + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Macaroons or round fancy biscuits
Form the soaked base layer that absorbs the wine and custard.
White wine
Moistens and flavours the biscuits beneath the custard layer.
Thick cream
Whipped into a light froth that forms the airy topping.
Egg whites
Whipped with the cream to help create a light, frothy texture.
Fine sugar
Sweetens the whipped cream topping.

The step that matters

Draining the froth on a cloth. Whipped cream that stays wet will weep liquid and soften the topping. Draining it lets the froth hold its shape until it is placed on the trifle.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, nutmeg, white wine, cream, 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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