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An Excellent Trifle

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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

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

  2. Pour enough raisin wine over them to soak.

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

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

  5. Whip heavy cream with egg whites, sugar, and lemon peel until fluffy, then spread it over the trifle.

  6. Make the whip a day in advance for better flavor.

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

Swap the raspberry

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against raisin, wine, rice, flour, cream, egg, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

More trifle recipes

Apple 48Gooseberry 43Lemon 18Swiss Cream 17Brandy 13Grape 12 See all 115 →

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