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Dessert

Coffee Cream in Shape

A chilled coffee custard made with roasted coffee, cream, egg yolks, sugar, and isinglass, set in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Coffee Cream in Shape

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the coffee and cream

  1. Roast the coffee until nicely browned.

  2. Boil the cream in a saucepan.

  3. Add the hot roasted coffee to the boiling cream and cover tightly.

Make the custard

  1. Let the mixture cool, then strain it into a bowl.

  2. Mix in the egg yolks and sifted sugar to your taste.

  3. Dissolve the isinglass as directed for lemon cream and add it to the mixture.

  4. When the mixture begins to set, pour it into a pint mold or glasses.

  5. Refrigerate until firm, then unmold or serve directly in glasses.

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. Coffee + creamtop 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. 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 yolks
Thicken the custard and enrich its texture as they set.
Isinglass
Gelatin-like setting agent that firms the cream so it holds its shape.
Thin cream
Provides fat and body, giving the custard a smooth, rich texture.
Raw coffee
Supplies the main coffee flavour once roasted and infused into the cream.

The step that matters

Add the hot roasted coffee to the boiling cream and cover tightly. Covering keeps volatile aroma compounds from escaping, so the coffee flavour carries into the cream. Pouring the isinglass or yolks in before the mixture has cooled risks scrambling the eggs or preventing a proper set.

“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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