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Dessert

Frozen Coffee Cream

A chilled dessert made by freezing a coffee and milk mixture thickened with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Coffee and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,202 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Frozen Coffee Cream

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the coffee base

  1. Boil coffee with water for 4-5 minutes.

  2. Let it settle and pour off the clear liquid.

  3. In a saucepan, combine the coffee with milk and sweeten to taste.

  4. Boil until there's just enough to fill your mold.

Thicken and freeze

  1. Beat the egg yolks and add them to the cream.

  2. Strain the mixture into the saucepan and thicken over low heat.

  3. Pour into a mold, cool, and then freeze.

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. Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 cream and give it a rich, smooth texture as they set over low heat.
Milk
Adds richness and body, softening the coffee flavour and giving the frozen cream a creamy texture.
Coffee
Provides the main flavour of the dish.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and softens the coffee's bitterness.

The step that matters

Thicken over low heat. Egg yolks set when heated, but at high heat they can scramble and curdle. Gentle heat and constant stirring let the custard thicken smoothly before it is strained and frozen.

“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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