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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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OK. This is a food thread, but I think it's within the framework of words, too.
My mom is making what she calls "punch bowl cake" today. When she described it, I said, "You're not making punch bowl cake; you're making trifle."
What she's making is layers of cake and whipped cream and custard and fruit in a bowl--and she's drizzling liqueur in it. And that's trifle--right? It just so happens that whoever wrote the recipe said to put all the layers of sweet ingredients into a punch bowl.
So I told her, "Mom, somebody saw trifle in a punch bowl, figured out the ingredients, and then called it 'punch bowl cake' when writing out the recipe for the Rocky Run Church cookbook. But it's really trifle."
Now my question after all that jabberwockying:
Why is trifle called trifle? If it's really great trifle--with farm fresh ingredients and nothing fake...everything made from scratch--it's really close to being ambrosia!
So, why is trifle called trifle? I don't get it.
Best regards,
WordsMouthWatering
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Why is trifle called trifle?
Depends. Is it made out of moderately hard pewter?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear Wordwind: "Trifle" is English understatement carried to an extreme, a pretended modesty on the part of the originator of a rather elaborate creation.
Dear Faldage: Peeeyoow on your pissed in pewter plumbum poisoning pitchers.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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dr. bill, did you perhaps mean not your but ewer?
[ducking for cover -e]
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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Trifle the cake so called probably because it's a light concoction. This usage dates from 1781. Interestingly (ahem) the term sponge-cake is later, 1808.
The original sense of trifle is a deception, gibe, jest, or idle tale. It comes from the Old French trufle, diminutive of truffe, with this sense. The change of vowel is Middle English.
The origin of this Old French word is unknown.
But it is, in form, effectively the same word as truffle the tuber, and indeed probably came from Latin tuber. (The consonant changes are slightly dodgy there and it's not entirely convincing.)
In the extended form terrae tuber, 'earth tuber', this gives Italian tartufo, German Kartoffel 'potato' (with another dodgy consonant shift t -> k), and the character Tartuffe.
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old hand
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old hand
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Mississippi Blues Song, c.1920...pertinent excerpt:
Well they cut so many trucks and trifles,
White folks you oughta work more mules than men.
(?) (?)
Other southern usages I've heard ...
a) Don't trifle with my affections.
b) Milo's a low down, no count, trifling man.
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addict
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addict
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b) Milo's a low down, no count, trifling man.Don't be so hard on yourself hon! I likes ya' just fine! 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Adage: De minimus non curat lex.
[The law does not concern itself with trifles.]
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Okay, true story time. My first wife's grandmother was a teetotaller, signed the pledge, the lot. She not only didn't drink, but she didn't like other people drinking either, which put her into a semi-permanent foul temper when she was in my company, I can assure you. And that was only on "family" occasions when neither of us could avoid the other's company.
To business: It's Christmas and, as usual, my mother-in-law went through the arduous task of making not one but two trifles - one with the requisite amount of booze added, the other innocent of a drop. Christmas din-dins comes around, and the turkey, the chicken, the pork - damn, I'm drooling all over my keyboard again - is consumed with the appropriate amount of gusto by those who had absolutely nothing to do with cooking it all.
Then comes dessert. "Would you like some trifle, Nana?" asks my ex-dearly beloved, full of Christmas spirit, although this was artificially engendered through the liberal consumption of her favourite tipple. Not naturally given to jollity, my former missus.
You should understand that at this time, mother-in law is in the kitchen out of sight. Father-in-law, brother-in-law and I were in the lounge trying to find out if drinking more whisky was going to make us sober again. I can assure you, as the result of assiduous repeated experiments over the years, that it does not. But we must persevere, mustn't we? So grandmother and granddaughter were more-or-less left to their own devices. Dangerous to all concerned, in both cases.
My former ball-and-chain serves gran up with a heapin' helpin' of trifle - but, as you may have guessed by now, out of the wrong bowl. Gran scoffs the lot, likes it, and asks for more. Granddaughter duly tops the plate up again, and gran disposes of that as well.
At about that time the Xmas pud is declared ready in the kitchen, is semi-ceremoniously carted into the dining room and deposited on the table, and the brandy is poured over the top. CK lights it and everyone goes ooooh and aaah as if it was some kind of burning-bush miraculous event rather than the simple application of chemistry or physics or whatever.
"Mum, would you like some Christmas pudding?" asks my mother-in-law.
"No thank you. But I'd like some more trifle," replies that withered but pretty-well inebriated ancient crone. Mum-in law goes to give her some trifle, and realises two things:
(a| Her mother had said that magical word, "more", and
(b) The unlaced trifle has not been touched.
I had a lot of time for my mother-in-law. She wasn't stupid and she was rather quick on the uptake when uptake quickness was required.
"You want this one?" she asked her mother, in a strangled tone.
"Yes, that one" says gran, just about licking her lips.
"Okay" says mum-out-law, and puts a small quantity on her plate.
"Oh, I think I could manage more than that," says the old biddy. Her daughter duly adds more. Gran tucks in like there's no tomorrow.
By now, we'd just about all realised what was going on. There were a number of clues, not the least of which that the old besom was actually smiling, something unheard of before, at least in my arch-ex-wife's lifetime. And I'd always wondered who she'd taken after. What's more, gran wasn't complaining about anything at all. She was a past mistress of the "It's too hot, it's too cold, the younger generation is rubbish, do this, don't do that, especially if you like it" form of peevish geriatric monologue. She tried a few jokes. She even smiled at one of mine. She was pleasant to everyone, even her son-in-law with whom she'd had a running thirty-year feud. Further, when she got up to go to the little girls' room after scraping her plate clean for the third time, she was even less steady on her pins than normal.
We all looked at each other and just burst out laughing.
Anyway, you pay for your fun and after dinner, when we were all sitting in front of the television in the usual Christmas Day post-prandial stupour, she went firmly to sleep and snored all afternoon.
The moral is obviously that you shouldn't trifle with an old teetotaller's trifle!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear CK: The moral I get from your tale is that you should sophisticate the victuals of such a harpy if you can get away with it. True, the best of attentions are not always appreciated. I remember an elderly Scots lady who came into the ER, having fallen on the stairs at home. I decided to have her kept in the hospital overnight for observation. Something told me she might be a candidate for DT's. So I decided to give her some paraldehyde, which was the only thing suitable available over fifty years ago. It tastes god-awful, and makes breath smell even worse, so it is hardly used at all now. I knew I would have to con her into taking it, so I told her I thought she needed something for her nerves. She brightened up perceptibly, and said bravely, that if it were for her own good, she'd take it. So I told her that I thought she needed a little whiskey. She brightened up very obviously, and said even more bravely that if it were for her good, she'd take it. So then I told her that she had to understand that the hospital whiskey was awful cheap and bad tasting. She still was brave. So she took the glass and downed the shot, coughed and glared at me furiously. "Ah'v dronk mony a glass of cheap whusky, but none so cheap as that!"
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