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Punch Au Café À LA Romaine

A chilled coffee punch made with ice cream, egg whites, sugar, and coffee.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Punch Au Café À LA Romaine

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the ice cream and the meringue made from the egg whites in a large bowl.

  2. Dissolve the sugar in the coffee and mix it into the ice cream mixture quickly.

  3. Avoid pouring the liquid onto the sides of the ice cream maker while mixing.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Cream + coffeetop 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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg 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 whites
Whipped into a meringue that adds airy foam and lightness to the punch.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilize the meringue foam.
Coffee
Supplies the main flavor and liquid that is folded into the base.
No-cook cream ice cream
Provides the cold, creamy fat-rich base that gives the punch its body.

The step that matters

Dissolve the sugar in the coffee and mix it in quickly. Fully dissolved sugar avoids grainy texture. Quick mixing limits melting of the cold ice cream and keeps the whipped meringue from deflating, so the punch stays light and smooth.

“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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