Recipe of the Month

Peg Bracken's London Trifle

A trifle all about trifle is how we might describe Helen Saberi and Alan Davidson's "Trifle", a charming, studious and funny exploration of this most quixotic of desserts. The authors chase trifle all over the globe, into multifarious manifestations, giving ninety (yes, ninety!) recipes for that goody, gloopy, sweet mouthful.

Serious cooks will want "Trifle" in order to present some of the magnificent recipes here, but we have chosen a featured recipe from Peg Bracken's "I Hate to Cook Book", for London Trifle, where it first appeared in the appendix. We have to confess that a history of fairly trashy trifles (Bird's custard powder, hundreds and thousands, you get the drift!) as well as the fact that this is so funny, led to us choosing a ridiculous recipe from the spirited Mrs Bracken, a lady who made her career in the 1960's by doing as little in the house and kitchen as she could possibly manage, and then by writing about it. Smart girl! We would serve this with a good Sauternes. Well, maybe not.

London Trifle

(Note breath-taking simplicity here)

1 cup yogurt
1 cup marmalade

Mix them up. Then taste. Maybe you'll want more yogurt. Or marmalade.

Spoon it into sherbet glasses, grate some orange rind on top, and chill it a bit.

(Note by Alan Davidson: In testing this concoction I decided to simplify it further by omitting the sherbet glasses, the grated orange rind and the whole tedious business of chilling. Just leave it all in the bowl (and save on the washing up).

The delightful "Trifle" is published by Prospect Books at stg£11.99 h/b and stg£8.99 p/b.