No Mere Trifle
The Food Programme
BBC
4.4 • 976 Ratings
🗓️ 20 December 2015
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For some, trifle is an essential part of Christmas - a star centrepiece at the dinner table. For others its a reminder of 70s food hell - soggy sponge, jelly, hundreds and thousands dissolving into custard and cream and possibly crowned with glace cherries. Tim Hayward argues pretty much every food writer of the last 50 years has pronounced on trifle in a massively doctrinaire fashion. He wants to fight the prejudice to delve into the shared secret recipes for quick and 'dirty' trifles and investigates the 'golden rules' to get every trifle doubter on side.
Presented by Tim Hayward. Produced by Anne-Marie Bullock.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello you've downloaded a podcast of BBC Radio 4's The Food Program. |
| 0:05.0 | Welcome to our world, from cooking to culture, politics to pleasure. |
| 0:10.0 | We hope you enjoy it. It's almost Christmas. |
| 0:15.0 | People are ordering turkeys, stirring puddings and laying in stocks of booze. |
| 0:21.0 | So we thought it would be fun to make a program about trifle. |
| 0:24.4 | We wanted to talk about all the trifle law, all the strange rules, prejudices, the predilections. |
| 0:29.2 | We wanted to dive deep into its wobbly layers. |
| 0:32.4 | It's a seasonal treat, a perennial favorite. Everybody loves |
| 0:35.4 | trifle, right? Or so I thought. |
| 0:37.7 | We've got a bit of a problem and this is my producer, Marie. And Marie you're just not |
| 0:48.0 | really okay with this, are you? Let's be honest. I'm not good about Trifo, I have described myself as triflphobic in the past and when I saw |
| 0:56.6 | this program get put on the list for the food program I thought I hope this isn't coming my way then I saw |
| 1:06.4 | there wasn't a name next to it then I saw my name next to it and I knew |
| 1:09.2 | exactly what was happening and I wasn't set up they didn't know about this before but it's not it's not |
| 1:16.7 | my greatest delight it is a difficult issue for me to broach. |
| 1:20.4 | I'm just sorry this is radio because your face is registering genuine |
| 1:24.2 | genuine disgust you just if this is beyond just I'm not that fond a trifle this is |
| 1:29.4 | really quite deep isn't it even pictures of it even seeing them in a supermarket just makes me |
| 1:34.9 | writhe really. It's an uncomfortableness and I have met other people who are like |
| 1:39.6 | this and I think it is partly a textual thing. |
| 1:43.0 | It's the soggy sponge at the bottom |
| 1:45.0 | and then sometimes I think I must have had a trifle in my youth |
... |
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