Name: Another Trifle
Ingredients: sponge cake; ½ cup champagne or white wine; preserved fruit; colored whip; currant jelly

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

Place sponge cake in a dish.
Pour champagne or white wine over the cake.
Layer preserved fruit about 1 inch thick on top.
Spread colored whip over the fruit.
Garnish with 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.

Champagne + curranttop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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 trifle together.
Champagne or white wine: Moistens the sponge cake and adds a light acidity and aroma.
Preserved fruit: Adds sweetness, fruity flavor, and moisture to the layers.
Colored whip: Adds a light, creamy top layer with a soft texture.
Currant jelly: Adds bright, tart-sweet flavor and color as a garnish.

“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.