I have convinced myself trifle is a summer thing, but is it? Its natural milieu might well be the depths of winter, as the creamy coda to Christmas Day for plum pudding refuseniks. You may indeed swing both ways, partaking of both trifle and pud. Fair play to you, and sure you’ll already be doing hard time in the gym come January.
By all means buy your trifle, in which case you’ll find it in individual blister packs in the chilled cabinet, along with the creme caramels, chocolate mousses and other creamy aerations. They will be cheap, sweet and convenient, with impressive shelf life, ticking all the boxes, except the one marked delight. If on the other hand you want a trifle that sensorily transports you back to childhood, knee high to your granny’s kitchen table and waiting for the adults to finally hit the dessert, you’ll have to process it yourself, just like she did.
Is trifle old fashioned? Absolutely. Toward the end of a remarkable life and after his magnum opus The Oxford Companion to Food, the late Alan Davidson couldn’t resist one last wafer-thin book. Co-authored with Helen Saberi, Trifle traces the first of its kind back to Thomas Dawson’s The Good Huswife’s Jewell in 1596. Forsooth, were not those gentle medieval ladies fortunate to have squire Thomas on hand to provide domestic instruction, on everything from how to boil a peacock to a poultice for shingles.
By 1751, sisters were doing it for themselves with the publication in both London and Dublin of Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. A sensation, it remained in print for the next century, codifying for “the lower sorts” everything from chicken curry to Yorkshire pudding, and in her “Hamburgh Sausage”, we see the first stirrings of the one sandwich to rule them all, the burger.
Despite her success, Hannah’s travails would put Martha Stewart in the ha’penny place. Of her 11 children with Irish soldier John Glasse, just five survived, and subsequent ventures, including a fashion boutique straight outta Bridgerton, proved ruinous. Penury and the debtor’s prison followed shortly thereafter. Courageous entrepreneur, pugnacious writer, proto influencer and plagiarist extraordinaire, Hannah would have excelled in the wild wellness of our contemporary media hellscape, where candles are scented with intimate feminine aroma and intellectual property goes up in smoke.
History may have neglected the trailblazing Hannah Glasse in favour of her contemporary Mrs Beeton, but her books remain important foundational culinary texts, and much admired by successors like Elizabeth David. On trifling matters Hannah instructs us with admirable brevity:
“Cover the bottom of your dish or bowl with Naples biscuits broke in pieces, mackeroons broke in halves, and ratafia cakes. Just wet them all through with sack, then make a good boiled custard not too thick, and when cold pour it over it, then put a syllabub over that. You may garnish it with ratafia cakes, currant jelly, and flowers.”
There it stands, high and mighty in its ornate bowl ... it might be the signal gastronomic achievement of perfidious Albion
Centuries on, this remains the blueprint for a successful trifle; in summary: pile two creamy delicious things on top of a boozy fruity delicious thing, then give all three things a fancy hat. Who among us wouldn’t want that, and though Britannia never actually ruled the world, its trifle had a good stab at it. Alfred Bird’s invention of instant custard in 1837 helped the cause, while the mass production of Hartley’s Jelly liberated the help from the queasy task of boiling a calf’s foot for its gelling properties.
Every culture has its meatball and, it seems, a trifle for afters. Wearing their knowledge light as a syllabub with a wit dry as good sherry, Davidson and Saberi travel to every outpost of the trifle realm, from Mrs Beeton’s Indian trifle with rose water and cardamom to the alcohol-forward charms of Gypsy Squire in the American South and the frugal Veiled Maidens of Nordic cuisine. As for everyone else, those haughty French might dismiss anything created by les rosbifs but they did at least contribute to the name, trufle, a thing of little importance. For their part, the Italians poke fun at it with their zuppa inglese, the English soup, but from whose loins do you think tiramisu ushered forth?
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And what about us, fond of an ‘oul trifle, as evidenced by Davidson with recipes and anecdotes from Myrtle Allen and Monica Sheridan? In our abundance of beautiful Irish produce, we are increasingly at pains to proclaim our culinary independence, but check the cupboard and you will find English condiments, preserves, confectionery, staple ingredients and more. We spend €5 million each week on their biscuits, and are worryingly reliant on UK flour for our bread, some 220,000 tonnes annually. They are in the same boat for our cheddar, to the tune of €500 million each year.
From before The Corn Laws to life after Brexit, our islands have been bound politically, economically and culturally by the making, trading and eating of food, like the layers of a trifle. There it stands, high and mighty in its ornate bowl, its head bejewelled and gaudy like the crown, an edible symbol of empire exerting the softest of power. It might be the signal gastronomic achievement of perfidious Albion, although the warped genius of pairing chips with lasagne comes a close second.
Steeped in history, steeped in booze, today’s trifle just quietly gets on with its business, one generation of party people to the next. Even the word is playful, being both noun and verb, and what could be more English than that?
Gerry Godley’s Ultimate Sherry Trifle Recipe
Gerry Godley bakes, thinks and writes on Instagram @bread_man_walking
