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Dessert

Trifle or Tipsy Cake

A layered dessert of sponge biscuits, custard, whipped cream, and fruit jam, flavored with lemon, wine, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 388 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Trifle or Tipsy Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cream

  1. In a large bowl, whisk together the cream, sugar, white wine, lemon juice, lemon zest, and cinnamon. Let it sit overnight.

  2. Remove the froth that rises to the top and drain it on a sieve over a bowl.

Assemble and serve

  1. The next day, layer the broken sponge biscuits, ratafia drop biscuits, and split almonds in a deep trifle dish.

  2. Pour enough white wine or ginger wine over the biscuits to moisten them completely.

  3. Add grated lemon peel and a thin layer of raspberry or strawberry jam.

  4. Pour a rich custard over the layers to a thickness of about 2 inches.

  5. Top with the whipped cream and garnish with edible flowers or 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. Biscuit + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together388 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Almond + raspberrytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together552 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  5. Cinnamon + biscuittop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together312 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

Heavy cream
Forms the rich, creamy base that is flavoured and chilled overnight.
Sponge biscuits
Soak up the wine to become moist and tender layers.
Sifted sugar
Sweetens the cream base and balances the wine and lemon.
Rich custard
Adds richness and a soft, smooth layer that moistens the cake below.
White wine
Moistens the cake and adds a light, acidic flavour to the dish.

The step that matters

Removing the froth from the cream. The cream is left to sit overnight, and froth rises to the top as it stands. Removing and draining it keeps the base smooth and prevents a loose, watery texture in the finished trifle.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, white wine, cinnamon, biscuit, almond, raspberry. 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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