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Dessert

Coffee Jelly

A chilled dessert made from coffee, sugar, water, gelatin, and cream, served with vanilla-flavored cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Coffee Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Soak the gelatin in the cold water for 2 hours.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the gelatin and stir until dissolved.

  3. Add the sugar and coffee, then strain the mixture.

  4. Pour the mixture into molds and set aside to harden.

Make the cream and serve

  1. Sweeten the cream and flavor it with vanilla.

  2. Beat the cream until stiff.

  3. Cut the jelly into small pieces.

  4. Serve the sauce over the pieces.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Coffee + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,391 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  4. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Gelatine
Sets the coffee liquid into a firm, wobbly jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the coffee and balances its bitterness.
Strong coffee
Provides the main flavor of the jelly.
Cream
Adds richness and a light, airy texture when beaten.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatin fully before adding the coffee. Gelatin only sets properly when it has completely dissolved in hot liquid. Undissolved granules leave gritty or weak spots, so the jelly may not firm evenly when cooled.

“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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