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Dessert

Coffee Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from coffee, cream, eggs, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

  1. Boil 1 quart of water and add 12 ounces of ground coffee.

  2. Strain through cheesecloth.

Make the custard

  1. In a separate bowl, combine 1 gallon of cream, 36 eggs, and 8 pounds of sugar.

  2. Heat over a steam bath until hot.

  3. Add the strained coffee mixture and 3½ gallons of cream.

  4. Strain again.

Freeze

  1. Freeze the mixture.

  2. Optionally, add burnt sugar for color or make it like vanilla ice cream, omitting the eggs.

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

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the custard base and add richness and a smooth texture when frozen.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the ice cream a smooth, creamy mouthfeel.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer and scoopable.
Ground coffee
Provides the coffee flavor that defines the finished ice cream.

The step that matters

Heat the custard over a steam bath. Gentle heat lets the egg mixture thicken smoothly without scrambling. Overheating can curdle the eggs and leave a grainy texture.

“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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