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Dessert

An Excellent Trifle

A layered dessert of lemon zest, egg yolks, macaroons, custard, jam, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

Make the lemon custard

  1. Finely shred the peel of a lemon and sweeten it to your taste.

  2. Add the yolks of eight eggs and simmer gently.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Pour the strained mixture into molds.

  5. Turn out the molds the next day.

Assemble and top

  1. Layer macaroons and ratafia drops in a dish and soak them with raisin wine.

  2. Pour cold rich custard over the soaked macaroons.

  3. Spread a layer of raspberry jam on top.

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

  5. Cover the trifle with the whipped mixture.

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. Lemon + raspberrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set when gently simmered, giving it richness and body.
Egg whites
Whipped with the cream to add air and lift to the topping.
Rich cream
Whipped into a light topping that adds richness and a soft texture.
Macaroons
Soak up raisin wine, becoming tender and moist to form the base layer.
Raisin wine
Moistens and flavours the macaroons and ratafia drops, adding sweetness and aroma.

The step that matters

Simmer the egg yolk mixture gently. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with heat; too much heat or too fast a simmer can scramble them into lumps, so the custard must stay gentle and be strained afterward.

Swap the raspberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Raspberrythe original

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