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Dessert

Indian Trifle

A layered dessert made with thickened milk, custard, and red currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Indian Trifle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Thicken the milk with rice flour mixed with a little cold milk.

  3. Sweeten the mixture with white sugar.

  4. Pour the mixture into a dish and let it cool.

Assemble and decorate

  1. Once cold, cut it into star shapes.

  2. Fill the gaps with boiled custard.

  3. Decorate with spots of red 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. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Rice + red curranttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together56 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

New milk
Forms the body of the set base once thickened and cooled.
Rice flour
Thickens the milk so it sets firm enough to cut into shapes.
White sugar
Sweetens the thickened milk base.
Boiled custard
Fills the gaps around the shapes, adding softness and richness.
Red currant jelly
Adds tart fruitiness and a bright color as decoration.

The step that matters

Thicken the milk with rice flour. Rice flour must be mixed smoothly with cold milk before adding, otherwise it clumps. The starch needs to be fully thickened and cooled so the base holds its shape when cut.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, rice, flour, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, flour, 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.

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