Trifle

Trifle

Course	Dessert
Place of origin	England
Main ingredients	Variable: Sponge biscuit (ladyfinger), Sherry, custard, fruit, whipped cream
Cookbook: Trifle   Media: Trifle

Trifle is a layered dessert of English origin. The usual ingredients are a thin layer of sponge fingers or sponge cake soaked in sherry or another fortified wine, a fruit element (fresh or jelly), custard and whipped cream layered in that order in a glass dish.^[1] The contents of a trifle are highly variable and many varieties exist, some forgoing fruit entirely and instead using other ingredients, such as chocolate, coffee or vanilla. The fruit and sponge layers may be suspended in fruit-flavoured jelly, and these ingredients are usually arranged to produce three or four layers. The assembled dessert can be topped with whipped cream or, more traditionally, syllabub.

The name trifle was used for a dessert like a fruit fool in the sixteenth century; by the eighteenth century, Hannah Glasse records a recognisably modern trifle, with the inclusion of a gelatin jelly.

History

Trifle appeared in cookery books in the sixteenth century.^[2] The earliest use of the name trifle was in a recipe for a thick cream flavoured with sugar, ginger and rosewater, in Thomas Dawson's 1585 book of English cookery The Good Huswifes Jewell.^[3][4] This flavoured thick cream was cooked 'gently like a custard, and was grand enough to be presented in a silver bowl.^[4] These earlier trifles, it is claimed, 'derived from the flavoured almond milk of medieval times'.^[4] Early trifles were, according to food historian Annie Gray, 'more like fools (puréed fruit mixed with sweetened cream)'.^[5] Trifle evolved from these fools, and originally the two names were used interchangeably.^[6]

It was not until the 1750s that trifles took the form that many know of today.^[2] Two recipes for what now is considered a trifle first appeared in the mid-18th century in England. Both recipes described biscuits soaked in wine layered with custard and covered in a whipped syllabub froth. One was in the 4th edition of Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1751) and the other was by an unknown author entitled The Whole Duty of a Woman (1751).^[1]

The Dean's Cream from Cambridge, England was made about the same time as Hannah Glasse's version and was composed of sponge cakes, spread with jam, macaroons and ratafias soaked in sherry, and covered with syllabub. Trifle like desserts of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries include King's Pudding, Easter Pudding, Victoria Pudding or Colchester pudding.^[4]

In 1855 Eliza Acton described The Duke's Custard, a mixture of sugared, brandied Morella cherries, covered in custard, edged with Naples biscuits (sponge fingers) or macaroons, which was then finished with solid whipped cream coloured pink with cochineal and 'highly flavoured' with brandy.^[4][8]

The English cookery writer

The late 19th century was, according to the food historian Annie Gray, "a sort of heyday" for trifles[5] and by the early 1900s there were, in print, says Gray, "a bewildering number of recipes". There were thirteen in The Encyclopaedia of Practical Cooker (1891), from Theodore Francis Garrett, alone.^[2] That book is unusual, suggests Gray, in including two savoury versions, one with veal and one with lobster.^[2]

In 2022, a trifle was selected to be the

Coronation Trifle was created by Adam Handling for the Coronation of King Charles III in 2023. It is made with Parkin, ginger custard and strawberry jelly.^[13]

Variations

Trifles may contain different sorts of alcohol such as

The Scots have a similar dish to the trifle, tipsy laird, made with Drambuie or whisky.^[15]

Similar desserts

In Italy, a dessert similar to and probably based on trifle is known as