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Dessert

Coffee Cream Ice

A chilled coffee-flavored ice cream made with cream, coffee, sugar, egg yolks, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Coffee Cream Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix all ingredients in a saucepan.

  2. Stir over low heat until the mixture thickens.

  3. Strain through a fine sieve into a bowl.

Chill and freeze

  1. Chill and freeze the mixture as usual.

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. Coffee + sugartop 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. 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 yolks
Thicken the custard as they set on gentle heat, and add richness and body.
Single cream
Provides fat for a rich, smooth texture that resists icy crystals.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the frozen ice cream soft enough to scoop.
Strong brewed coffee
Supplies the main coffee flavour and aroma.

The step that matters

Stir over low heat until the mixture thickens. Egg yolk proteins set gradually as they warm. Too much heat scrambles them into curds, so gentle, constant stirring keeps the custard smooth. Straining then removes any small lumps.

“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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