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Coffee Custard Cream

A chilled custard cream flavored with coffee, nuts, and cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Custard Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix cream, milk, eggs, sugar, and cornstarch together.

  2. Beat well and heat the mixture until it thickens slightly.

Add flavourings and freeze

  1. When partly cooked, add cherries and nuts.

  2. Stir in the coffee last.

  3. Freeze the mixture until solid.

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. Coffee + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together105 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

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

  4. Nuts + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together982 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  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

Eggs
Thicken the custard as they cook and give it a rich, set body.
Cornstarch
Thickens the custard base so it sets smoothly when heated.
Cream
Adds fat for a rich, smooth texture that stays creamy after freezing.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the texture of the frozen custard.
Strong coffee
Provides the main coffee flavour and aroma.

The step that matters

Heat until it thickens slightly. Egg and cornstarch thickeners set as the mixture heats, but overheating can scramble the eggs and leave lumps. Heat gently and stop once it coats a spoon lightly, so the custard stays smooth before freezing.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, egg, coffee, milk, sugar):

  1. Cocoafits better
  2. Hazelnutfits about as well
  3. Almondfits about as well
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg, coffee, milk, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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