Skip to main content
Dessert

An Excellent Trifle

A layered dessert of macaroons, raisin wine, custard, raspberry jam, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

An Excellent Trifle

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble the base

  1. Layer macaroons and ratafia drops in the bottom of a dish.

  2. Pour in enough raisin wine to soak them.

  3. Once soaked, pour cold rich custard over them, about 2-3 inches thick.

  4. Add a layer of raspberry jam on top.

Make and add the whip

  1. Make a high whip with cream, beaten egg whites, sugar, lemon peel, and raisin wine.

  2. Cover the trifle with the whip.

  3. For best flavor, prepare the whip the day 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.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Raisin + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Wine + raspberrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into the cream to give the topping a light, airy, high structure.
Rich cream
Whipped to form the topping, adding richness and a soft, velvety texture.
Cold rich custard
Forms the thick middle layer, adding creamy moisture and richness over the soaked macaroons.
Macaroons
Soak up raisin wine to become soft and moist, forming the trifle's base layer.
Raisin wine
Soaks the macaroons and flavours the whip, adding moisture and fruity aroma.

The step that matters

Whipping the cream and egg whites into a high whip. Egg whites and cream must be beaten until they hold stiff peaks; underwhipped topping slumps into the custard, while overwhipped cream turns grainy and loses its smooth texture.

Swap the raspberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, wine, egg, rice, flour, cream, sugar. 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 →

You might also like

Lemon Rice PuddingLemon Rice Pudding19 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesRaspberry JamRaspberry Jam150 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipes