Zuppa Inglese (English Trifle)

Origin: Florence, Italy

Source: Pellegrino Artusi, 1891

History

Zuppa inglese is "English soup" that is neither English nor soup: layers of custard and liqueur-soaked cake, widely thought to descend from the English trifle. Its birth is genuinely contested, and the competing stories place it in sixteenth-century Ferrara, in nineteenth-century Tuscany, and in early nineteenth-century Parma. The record does not settle which, if any, is true.

Artusi's recipe is more interesting than a simple regional entry. He begins by explaining that in Tuscany the custard is made very loose, without starch or flour, and served in coffee cups — and that made this way it is more delicate but will not stand up in a mould and makes no show. So he gives the flour-thickened pastry cream instead, and builds the dish in a fluted mould.

The assembly is precise. Fruit preserve goes in the bottom, then a layer of cream, then savoiardi soaked in liqueur. If the mould has eighteen flutes, he says, dip nine of the biscuits in alkermes and nine in white rosolio and alternate them around the sides, so the red and the pale stand against each other. He warns against soaking the biscuits too long, since they will give the liqueur back up, and says a syrup that is too sweet can be corrected with rum or cognac.

The origin stories, and the account of where the scarlet liqueur got its colour, we learned from popular reference and food-writing sources, and we were unable to locate the evidence they rest on.

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. Make a pastry cream: work sugar with yolks, add flour then milk, and cook, stirring, until thickened; cool.
  2. In a greased fluted mould, layer fruit preserve, cream, and ladyfingers dipped alternately in white rosolio and alkermes.
  3. Repeat the layers to fill the mould, not over-soaking the ladyfingers.
  4. Chill on ice, then turn out by dipping the mould briefly in hot water. Serves 7-8.

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