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Dessert

An Excellent Trifle

A layered dessert of macaroons, ratafia drops, raisins, custard, raspberry jam, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Raspberry and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,109 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

An Excellent Trifle

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble the base

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

  2. Pour enough raisin wine to soak them.

  3. Prepare cold rich custard with more eggs and some rice flour, and pour it over the soaked macaroons.

  4. Spread a layer of raspberry jam on top of the custard.

Top and serve

  1. Make a high whip with rich cream, 2 beaten egg whites, sugar, lemon peel, and raisin wine.

  2. Cover the trifle with the whipped cream.

  3. For best flavor, prepare the whip a day in advance.

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. Raspberry + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Raspberry + winetop 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

Macaroons
Absorb the raisin wine and form the soaked base layer.
Cold rich custard
Adds a creamy, set layer that gives the trifle its body.
Rich cream
Whipped into a light topping that adds richness and a soft texture.
2 egg whites
Whipped to trap air, giving the topping a light, airy structure.
Raspberry jam
Adds sweetness and fruity flavor between the custard and the topping.

The step that matters

Whipping the cream and egg whites. Egg whites and cream must be whipped to soft peaks without overbeating, since overbeating squeezes out liquid and makes the topping grainy or collapse onto the custard.

Swap the raisin

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (raspberry, cream, egg, sugar, lemon, wine):

  1. Blackberryfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Raisinthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against raspberry, cream, egg, sugar, lemon, wine. 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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