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Dessert

Coffee Pudding

A chilled dessert made with sugar, egg yolks, coffee, heavy cream, and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Coffee Pudding

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Coffee Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, stir together the granulated sugar and egg yolks.

  2. Scald the mixture with the strong coffee and let it cool.

Assemble and chill

  1. Whip the heavy cream until stiff peaks form.

  2. Fold the coffee mixture into the whipped cream.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold and pack it in ice and salt.

  4. Chill for 3 hours before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Sugar + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness and emulsifying power to the base.
Heavy cream
Whipped to stiff peaks, it gives the pudding a light, airy, creamy texture.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the pudding and helps stabilize the egg yolks during scalding.
Strong coffee
Provides the main coffee flavor and liquid for the custard base.

The step that matters

Scald the mixture with the strong coffee. Heating egg yolks gently thickens them into a custard; overheating can scramble the eggs, leaving a grainy texture that cannot be fixed by folding.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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