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Dessert

Coffee Jelly

A chilled coffee dessert made with gelatin, sweetened coffee, and topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatin in ½ cup cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Prepare strong coffee as you would for serving.

  3. Sweeten the coffee to taste.

Set the jelly

  1. Add the dissolved gelatin to the hot coffee and stir well.

  2. Pour the mixture into wet cups and refrigerate for a few hours.

Serve

  1. Serve with whipped cream.

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. Sugar + creamtop 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).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Forms the firm, wobbly structure that sets the coffee into a jelly.
Coffee
Provides the main liquid and the bitter, roasted flavour of the dessert.
Sugar
Sweetens the coffee and balances its natural bitterness.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a cool, creamy contrast to the firm coffee jelly.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatin fully into the hot coffee. Gelatin only sets once it has fully melted and dispersed. Undissolved granules leave specks or weak patches. Stirring well while the coffee is hot lets the gelatin spread evenly, so chilling can form a uniform, firm jelly.

“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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