Trifle fans north and south of the border are whipping themselves into a bit of froth over the exact origins of one of the UK's favourite foods. Trifle will feature on many Burns' Supper menus in Scotland this weekend. And in a recent BBC TV food programme that saw trifle take third place, out of 100, in a UK-wide survey, more than half the votes for the pudding came from Scots.

But it's claimed trifle is actually a traditional English sweet or dessert. Alan Davidson, eminent food historian and Scots author of the Oxford Companion to Food, says: ''Trifles have been a perennial of English summer lunches, tennis parties and schoolboy dreams.'' He adds that it's possible to trace recipes dating from 1596 with the first by a T Dawson. It was called the Good Huswife's Jewell: and consisted only of spiced and sweetened boiled cream. It was, in fact, more like what we know today as a fool, and a recipe book in 1598 referred to a trifle and a fool as the same thing.

Ronnie Clydesdale, owner of the Ubiquitous Chip in Glasgow, points out that the trifle originated from medieval cooked custards. It was only later that alcohol, cake, fruit and cream were added. This is probably what top chef

Gordon Ramsay refers to when he says: ''A good trifle should have the texture

of a fruit fool - creamy without being

at all runny.''

So why, in Scotland, is trifle increasingly favoured as a symbol of Scottish nationhood? Typsy Laird, or sherry

trifle, is often served at celebrations of the life of national bard Burns, who died in 1796. Recipes for Scotch Trifle only appear from the nineteenth century, but then it can be argued that they would have been printed much later than they were actually being used in Scotland.

Scots author Marian McNeill wrote The Scots Kitchen in 1929, and gives as the traditional recipe for Scots Trifle: ''Stale sponge cakes or rice cake, ratafias, raspberry or strawberry jam, lemon rind, sherry, brandy (optional), rich custard, cream, garnishing.

''Split six individual sponge cakes and spread thickly with jam. Put together again and arrange in a shallow glass dish. Pound about 18 ratafia biscuits and strew over the sponges. Sprinkle with the grated rind of half a lemon. Over this pour a gill of sherry (not too dry) and two tablespoonfuls of brandy, then three-quarters of a pint of rich custard. Allow to stand for at least an hour. Whip half a pint of cream, add sugar to taste and flavour with vanilla or Drambuie.

''Pile this over the custard and garnish with crystallised rose petals (pink) or cherries and angelica; ratafias and pistachio nuts; pink sugar with a border of ratafias; harlequin comfits; or as desired. Marsala, ginger wine, or fruit syrup, may be substituted for sherry.''

Marian acknowledges the previous method favoured by Meg Dods, the Selkirk landlady who wrote the earliest known Scots cookbook, The Cook's and Housewife's Manual, in 1826, by adding in a footnote: ''Meg Dods, in her recipe for An Elegant Trifle, writes: 'Beat the cream with sugar, a glass of white wine, lemon juice and grate, and a few bits of cinnamon'.''

The texture provided by biscuits is also favoured by Scots chef, Nick Nairn, who runs Nairn's Cookery School at Port of Menteith near Aberfoyle. He recommends making a toffee brittle of grilled sugar and oatmeal to layer in between raspberries, custard and cream flavoured with whisky.

Both the Scottish recipes are dated later than the English T Dawson's, however, so why do Scots think of trifle as their national pudding? Some people claim it's because of the cream.

By the eighteenth century, English trifles had evolved to contain ''biscuits wetted with wine put in place at the bottom of the bowl, with custard on top and syllabub poured over all''. The medieval syllabub, of course, was soon replaced by whipped double cream. According to Clarissa Dickson Wright, double cream is a gift to the English from the Scots.

''The Stuart kings were potty about cream and bred Jersey cows specially for that purpose,'' she says. ''When James VI became James I in the seventeenth century, suddenly English recipes began to contain raw cream. Before that, Scotland was the only country in the world that didn't cook its cream.''

And there's another beguiling explanation. Contrary to many assumptions, the word ''trifle'' doesn't refer to the dessert's three layers of sponge, custard and cream. It comes from the Middle English ''trufle'', which in turn comes from the Old French ''trufe'', meaning something of little importance.

Two delicious theories lie behind this. They play on the auld misunderstanding about food that exists between the English and the French. Either it came about through the French calling the English dessert a mockery of culinary tradition, or it was because the English stole the French dessert in the first place, and could not pronounce it properly.

Even if it's not a Scottish invention,

it's certainly become a Scottish institution and one that could be used to strengthen the Auld Alliance.