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Dessert

Coffee Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from coffee, water, cream, sugar, eggs, and burnt sugar for color.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 base

  1. Boil the coffee with water for about 3 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture into a large bowl.

  3. Add the cream, sugar, and eggs, then set over steam.

Cook and cool

  1. Stir and heat until hot, then remove from heat and cool.

Color and freeze

  1. Color the mixture with burnt sugar to achieve a good brown.

  2. Strain into a freezing can and freeze until solid.

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. 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

Coffee
Provides the main coffee flavor of the ice cream.
Cream
Adds fat for a rich, smooth texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and keeps the frozen texture softer.
Eggs
Thicken the base as they heat and add richness.

The step that matters

Heating the cream, sugar, and egg mixture. Eggs thicken as their proteins gently set. Too much heat makes them scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy base, so stir constantly and heat only until hot.

“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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