Wartime Trifle

Then the wartime years came and shortages meant that milk and eggs, the key ingredients for trifle, weren’t available. Dried eggs, custard powder and grated potato or potato flour were used instead. You couldn’t bake cakes so a tea bun soaked in fruit juice was often suggested.

After the Second World War, it seems like the trifle was largely considered an unfashionable dessert. This was mostly to do with the fact that during the years of food rationing the glorious boozy trifle went to a stale bun soaked in juice with fake custard. Nothing of the previously celebrated tipsy trifle pudding remained. Tinned fruit became fashionable in the postwar years with Marguerite Patten, one of the earliest TV celebrity chefs, as a major influence. Patten shared many trifle recipes over the several decades that she wrote books, articles and did TV shows. She uses a set jelly and custard powder in her trifles and also advises typically retro-looking decorations such as glacé cherries and nuts to go on top. I do like a retro trifle from time to time.