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Dessert

Coffee Mousse

A chilled dessert made with whipped cream, coffee syrup, sugar, ice, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Coffee Mousse

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Whip the heavy cream until stiff.

  2. In a separate bowl, combine the cooled coffee syrup and sugar.

  3. Add the coffee mixture to the whipped cream and mix well.

  4. Pack the mixture in a container with ice and salt.

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. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Cream + syruptop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Coffee + syruptop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Cream + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Heavy cream
Whipped into stiff foam, its trapped air gives the mousse its light, airy structure.
Black coffee
Cooked down to a thick syrup, it concentrates the coffee flavor and adds bitter depth.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the frozen mousse soft and scoopable.

The step that matters

Whip the cream until stiff. Stiff peaks trap the air that makes a mousse light. Overwhipping squeezes out liquid and turns the cream grainy and buttery, while underwhipping leaves it too loose to hold its shape once folded 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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