Zuppa Inglese (English Soup) – The Story of an Italian Trifle

Zuppa Inglese, loosely translated as English soup, is an extremely popular Italian dessert found mainly in the north-central regions of the peninsula: Tuscany, Emilia-Romagna, Marche, and Umbria. Rich in ingredients, it’s similar to traditional English trifle, but it’s almost always homemade!

Sitting in a rustic restaurant in the hills outside the seaside city of Rimini, enjoying the conversation that flows after a good meal, our dinner companion, an Irishman, asked with a puzzled air, “But why is it called English zuppa?” There seemed to be a consensus at the table, including the restaurant owner, that the dish had been developed in the immediate post-war period, while Allied forces were still housed in the region. The theory goes that the dish was developed on the instructions of English soldiers who wanted a little taste of home, and that the results tasted so good that the dish lingered long after the troops had gone home.

It is a beautiful and colorful anecdote, but unfortunately without foundation. If we consult Pellegrino Artusi, one of the first and most famous codifiers of Italian culinary traditions, we find a recipe for zuppa inglese in his book Science in the kitchen and the art of mangiar bene – a book that was published in 1891, more than half a century before British troops with powdered custard rations reached Italian shores. Theories that dig deeper include one that attributes the origins of the recipes to France during the Hundred Years’ War, when the dish was named as a two-fingered salute to the English. This has little to recommend it as a theory, as there are no particular sources and the dish does not appear as such in French cuisine at the time or throughout history.

More credible, but still unsourced, is the suggestion that the dessert was created by a Florentine servant girl in Fiesole for an English family in the 16th century. One of the strongest claims to her invention is found in the city of Ferrara, which during the 16th century had a very wealthy court ruled by the Este family, who had strong commercial and diplomatic links with the Elizabethan court. One thing seems certain, that the recipe was influenced, through trade or diplomacy, by the British Trifle, whose first written account we have during the 16th century in a cookbook. The jewel of the good farmer written by a certain Thomas Dawson. Influenced, perhaps, by the idea of ​​the trifle, the dish remains intrinsically Italian, despite its name and the use of ‘spanish bread’ as an essential ingredient.

Let us pass, however, from the etymological and theoretical to the purely practical. How do you make a decent English zuppa? Ingredients:

for the sponge 6 eggs, 150 grams of sugar, a little lemon or orange peel, 150 grams of white flour, butter

For the cream topping 4 eggs, 4 egg yolks, 8 tablespoons of sugar, 4 tablespoons of flour, 1.5 liters of milk, 200 grams of icing sugar, Alkermes Liquor, Rum

To make the sponge: Separate the egg white from the yolks. Beat the yolks in a bowl, add the sugar and beat until well blended and smooth. Beat the egg whites well and gently begin adding to your mixing bowl, mixing from the bottom of the bowl up to avoid ruining the consistency of the egg whites. Then start adding the flour gently, constantly mixing carefully. Get a baking sheet with a high rim (25 cm) and pour in your mixture and cook in a preheated oven at 160 degrees for about 40 minutes. Your sponge cake base (pan di spagna in Italian) should be light and delicate, so make sure the oven temperature is correct and not too high. Let cool.

For the cream: Boil half a liter of milk with a lemon peel. In a bowl, add the four eggs and four yolks, and mix together with the sugar. Mix until the eggs have turned into a creamy foam. Gently start adding your flour, mixing all the time to maintain consistency. Add half a liter of cold milk, along with your boiled milk (lemon peel removed) to the mixture, stirring constantly. Add your mixture back to the pot where you boiled the milk and simmer gently, stirring constantly for about twenty minutes, after which your cream should have a thick consistency. Allow to cool, stirring occasionally to prevent a skin from forming on top.

Putting it all together: Cut the crust off the top of your sponge cake base, then cut the base into strips (thin the first time you do it, then to your liking). At the same time, mix the rum and alkermes in a container (in which you will dip your sponge fingers). How much you use is up to you, depending on what kind of kick you want to give the dessert! In an appropriate sized dessert bowl, add a thin layer of your cream. Then start soaking the biscuits in your alkermes rum concoction and layer them on top of the cream. Add your next layer of cream and sponge, and so on until you’re done. That’s the basic recipe – variations include topping everything with meringue, the addition of chocolate or fruit. Enjoy!