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Dessert

Coffee Jelly

A chilled dessert made from coffee, milk, sugar, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Coffee Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse and sweeten

  1. Dissolve the gelatin as for cream fluff.

  2. Boil the coffee in a piece of muslin in the milk for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture through muslin into a bowl.

  4. Sweeten to taste.

Set

  1. Stir in the dissolved gelatin until thick.

  2. Place in a small mold and refrigerate until set.

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 + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm jelly as it cools and chills.
Coffee
Gives the jelly its main flavour and aroma.
Milk
Adds body and creaminess, softening the coffee's bitterness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the coffee.

The step that matters

Fully dissolve the gelatine before stirring it in. Gelatine only sets when it is fully dissolved and then cools. Undissolved granules leave gritty or weak spots, and a mixture that is too hot will not thicken evenly before it is chilled.

“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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