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Dessert

Coffee Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from roasted coffee, thin cream, egg yolks, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Coffee Ice Cream

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 Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the coffee cream

  1. Roast the coffee until nicely browned.

  2. Boil the thin cream in a saucepan.

  3. Pour the roasted coffee into the hot cream and cover it.

  4. Let it cool.

  5. Strain the mixture into a bowl.

Make the custard

  1. Mix in the egg yolks and sugar to taste.

  2. Heat the mixture in a saucepan over low heat.

  3. Stir with a whisk until it just boils.

  4. Let it cool.

  5. Strain through a fine sieve.

Freeze

  1. Freeze the mixture according to your ice cream maker's instructions.

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. 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

Raw coffee
Provides the main coffee flavour, which deepens when the beans are roasted.
Thin cream
Supplies the fat and body that give the ice cream its richness and smoothness.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they heat and add richness and emulsifying fat.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the texture of the frozen ice cream.

The step that matters

Heating the custard until it just boils. Egg yolks thicken as they warm, but overheating can curdle them into grainy lumps. Heat gently and stir constantly, stopping as soon as it just boils.

“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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