Name: Coffee Ice Cream
Ingredients: 1 pint strong coffee; 1½ cups granulated sugar; 2 teaspoons coffee essence; 1 quart cream

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 Ice Cream

Ingredients

1 pint strong coffee
1½ cups granulated sugar
2 teaspoons coffee essence
1 quart cream

Directions

Make the coffee base

Combine 1 pint of strong coffee and 1½ cups of granulated sugar in a saucepan.
Bring the mixture to a boil.
Allow the mixture to cool.

Finish and freeze

Stir in 2 teaspoons of coffee essence and 1 quart of cream.
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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,339 recipes

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

Strong coffee: Provides the main coffee flavor and liquid for the base.
Granulated sugar: Adds sweetness and softens the frozen texture by lowering the freezing point.
Coffee essence: Intensifies the coffee aroma and flavor.
Cream: Adds fat for a rich, smooth texture.

“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.