Swiss Cream, or Trifle

Instructions

1. Flavour pleasantly with cinnamon a pint of rich cream, after having taken from it as much as will mix smoothly to a thin batter four teaspoonsful of the finest flour.
2. Sweeten it with six ounces of well-refined sugar in lumps.
3. Place it over a clear fire in a delicately clean saucepan, and when it boils stir in the flour, and simmer it for four or five minutes, stirring it gently without ceasing.
4. Then pour it out, and when it is quite cold mix with it by degrees the strained juice of two moderate-sized and very fresh lemons.
5. Take a quarter of a pound of macaroons, cover the bottom of a glass dish with a portion of them, pour in a part of the cream, lay the remainder of the macaroons upon it, add the rest of the cream, and ornament it with candied citron sliced thin.
6. It should be made the day before it is wanted for table.
7. The requisite flavour may be given to this dish by infusing in the cream the very thin rind of a lemon, and part of a stick of cinnamon slightly bruised, and then straining it before the flour is added; or, these and the sugar may be boiled together with two or three spoonsful of water, to a strongly flavoured syrup, which, after having been passed through a muslin strainer, may be stirred into the cream.
8. Some cooks boil the cinnamon and the grated rind of a lemon with all the other ingredients, but the cream has then to be pressed through a sieve after it is made, a process which it is always desirable to avoid.
9. It may be flavoured with vanilla and maraschino, or with orange-blossoms at pleasure; but is excellent made as above.
10. Proportions: Rich cream, 1 pint; sugar, 6 oz.; rind, 1 lemon; cinnamon, 1 drachm; flour, 4 teaspoonsful; juice, 2 lemons; macaroons, 4 oz.; candied citron, 1 to 2 oz.