Whims and Fancies of a Trifle-Lover Or, 'An Idle Tale, A Thing of No Importance'

The sub-title of this essay is quite inappropriate, as the author herself demonstrates. One of the great paradoxes of culinary terminology is that what many people see as Britain's supreme contribution to the dessert tables of the world, for children and adults alike, to wit the trifle, should bear a name which suggests that it is of no consequence. This, surely, is carrying much too far the British tradition of playing down the merits of things British. In the present essay, Helen Saberi gives this confection the lustre which is its due - not so much because of the distinguished and intricate ancestry which belongs to it, but mainly because of its excellence in the form in which we know it today. In cottage and castle alike this plebeian yet aristocratic, complex yet simple, creation achieves a degree of satisfaction for human appetites and an aesthetic and emotional impact which stand unrivalled on the tablecloth.