Skip to main content
Dessert

Coffee Drops

A confection made by mixing coffee extract with almond paste or fondant and shaping into balls or rolls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Coffee and almond work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 374 recipes. Both carry acetylpyrazine, which smells roast. The science ↓

Coffee Drops

Ingredients

Directions

Make the coffee extract

  1. Place ground coffee in a fine flannel in a funnel over a cup.

  2. Slowly pour ½ cup of water over the coffee, ensuring it is moistened.

  3. Gently press the flannel to extract the liquid.

  4. Pour the liquid back through the coffee and press again without squeezing.

Make the drops

  1. For the first method, mix almond paste and confectioners' sugar, adding coffee extract drop by drop until a stiff paste forms. Shape into small balls or almond-shaped rolls.

  2. For the second method, mix firm fondant candy with enough coffee extract to flavor it strongly, then add confectioners' sugar to form a stiff paste. Shape into balls or rolls.

  3. Melt fondant in a bowl over boiling water, add a few drops of coffee, and stir until smooth.

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. Coffee + almondtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together374 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).

  2. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Almond paste
Forms the base of the paste, giving the drops a firm, chewy body and nutty flavor.
Confectioners' sugar
Stiffens the paste and adds sweetness, giving the drops a smooth, workable texture.
Firm fondant candy
Provides a sweet, smooth base that sets into a firm, creamy paste for the second method.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Cocoafits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Nutsfits about as well
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, 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.

You might also like

Coffee Ice CreamCoffee Ice Cream91 recipesCoffee CustardCoffee Custard27 recipesAlmond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipes