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Dessert

Coffee Ice Cream

A custard-based ice cream flavored with coffee, sugar, milk, cream, egg yolks, salt, brandy, and walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Coffee Ice Cream

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 Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk with the coffee.

  2. Gradually add the hot milk to the slightly beaten egg yolks mixed with sugar and salt.

  3. Cook over hot water until the mixture thickens.

  4. Add 1 cup of cream and let it stand on the back of the stove for 20 minutes.

Cool and freeze

  1. Cool the mixture, then add the remaining cream and brandy.

  2. Strain through double thickness of cheesecloth and freeze until very stiff.

Shape and serve

  1. Shape into individual pyramids using a scoop and roll in the chopped walnut meats.

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 + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Coffee + walnuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together289 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground coffee
Supplies the main coffee flavor, infused into the hot milk.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they cook and add richness to the ice cream.
Cream
Adds fat that makes the ice cream rich and smooth.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and softens the texture of the frozen ice cream.
Brandy
Adds aroma and helps keep the frozen ice cream scoopable.

The step that matters

Cook over hot water until the mixture thickens. Egg yolks thicken custard as they gently heat, but high heat makes them scramble and curdle. Cooking over hot water keeps the temperature gentle, so stir steadily and watch for a smooth, coating consistency.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (coffee, sugar, milk, cream, egg, brandy, meat):

  1. Cocoafits about as well
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Almondfits about as well
  4. Pecansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, sugar, milk, cream, egg, brandy, meat. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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