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Dessert

Another Trifle

A layered dessert of sponge cake, champagne, preserved fruit, whipped cream, and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Champagne and currant work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Another Trifle

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place sponge cake in a dish.

  2. Pour ½ cup of champagne or white wine over the cake.

  3. Layer preserved fruit about 1 inch thick on top.

  4. Spread colored whipped cream over the fruit.

  5. Garnish with a few bits of currant jelly.

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. Champagne + curranttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Champagne + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together83 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Cream + curranttop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,829 recipes

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 layer that soaks up the wine and holds the structure of the trifle.
Champagne or white wine
Soaks into the cake, adding moisture and a light acidity to balance the sweet layers.
Preserved fruit
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour, with soft texture contrasting the cake and cream.
Whipped cream
Provides a light, rich topping that adds fat and a smooth, airy texture.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (champagne, cream):

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against champagne, cream. 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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