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Dessert

Coffee Mousse

A chilled dessert made with whipped cream, sugar, egg yolks, powdered ladyfingers, and coffee extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 Mousse

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mousse

  1. In a bowl, combine whipped cream, granulated sugar, beaten egg yolks, powdered ladyfingers, and coffee extract.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold.

Chill

  1. Cover tightly and pack the mold in ice and salt.

  2. Chill for three to four hours.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + coffeetop 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

Whipped cream
Whipped air and fat give the mousse its light, creamy body.
Egg yolks
Yolks add richness and help bind the mixture into a smooth, set texture.
Granulated sugar
Sugar sweetens the mousse and adds body to the cream.
Ladyfingers
Powdered ladyfingers add dry starch and flavour that help thicken and give structure.

The step that matters

Folding the cream and yolks together. Whipped cream deflates if it is overmixed or stirred too hard, which leaves the mousse dense and heavy instead of airy. Combine gently so the trapped air stays in the mixture.

“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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