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Dessert

Fruit Trifle

A layered dessert of beaten eggs folded with sugar, currant jelly, and raspberry jam, set between sponge cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and raspberry work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 366 recipes. Both carry ethyl benzoate, which smells fruity, sweet. The science ↓

Fruit Trifle

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the eggs until stiff.

  2. Fold in the sugar, currant jelly, and raspberry jam.

  3. Layer the mixture with sponge cakes in a serving dish.

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. Currant + raspberrytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together366 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + raspberrytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,101 recipes

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

  4. Egg + raspberrytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Egg + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped to stiff foam, they give the trifle its light, airy structure.
Sponge cakes
Soaked up layers that give the trifle body and a soft, tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and helps stabilise the whipped egg foam.
Currant jelly
Adds fruity sweetness and tartness along with moisture to the mixture.
Raspberry jam
Adds concentrated fruit flavour, sweetness and moisture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs until stiff. Eggs must be whipped to stiff peaks to trap air, which gives the trifle its light texture. Under-whipped eggs leave the mixture dense and watery, and folding too vigorously afterward deflates the foam.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Red currantfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, 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.

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