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Dessert

Strawberry Trifle

A layered dessert of sponge cake, custard, strawberries, and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Strawberry Trifle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Beat in the sugar and egg yolks, cooking until it thickens, about 10 minutes.

  3. Let the custard cool.

Assemble and top

  1. In a glass dish, layer sliced cake, wet with cold custard, and sprinkle with strawberries.

  2. Repeat layers until all cake is used, pouring in remaining custard.

  3. Beat the egg whites to a meringue with 1 tablespoon of powdered sugar and spread on top.

  4. Garnish with a few strawberries and chill until ready to serve.

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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Stale sponge cake
Forms the base layers and soaks up the custard to become soft and moist.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard, and whites whipped into meringue give the topping its light structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, which thickens as the egg yolks set.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilise the whipped egg white meringue.
Strawberries
Add fresh fruit flavour, sweetness and acidity between the cake layers.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard until it thickens. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but overheating can scramble them into lumps. Cook gently and stir steadily until the custard coats a spoon, then cool it before layering so the cake does not turn soggy or runny.

“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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