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Dessert

Coffee Jelly

A chilled gelatin dessert made from coffee, sugar, water, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and gelatin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,778 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Coffee Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare 1 pint of strong coffee and sweeten with sugar to taste.

  2. Soak ½ ounce of gelatin in ½ cup of cold water for 15 minutes.

  3. Drain the water.

Make and set the jelly

  1. Dissolve the gelatin in the hot coffee.

  2. Wet a mold.

  3. Pour the mixture through a strainer into the mold.

  4. Refrigerate until set.

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.

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 + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

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

  3. Coffee + gelatintop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatin
Forms the gel network that makes the coffee set into a firm, sliceable jelly.
Coffee
Provides the main flavor and liquid that becomes the jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the coffee to balance its bitterness.

The step that matters

Soaking the gelatin. Gelatin must first hydrate in cold water so its granules swell evenly. Dissolving it dry or unevenly in the hot coffee can leave lumps and weak spots, so the set jelly may be uneven.

“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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