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Dessert

Coffee Jelly

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Gelatin and cream match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,628 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Coffee Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Soak the gelatin in 1 pint of cold water until soft.

  2. Pour 1 quart of strong hot coffee into the soaked gelatin and sweeten to taste.

Set and serve

  1. Mold the mixture and refrigerate until set.

  2. Serve with sugar and 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. Gelatin + creamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Gelatin + sugartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

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

  5. 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

Gelatin
Provides the structure that lets the coffee mixture set into a firm jelly.
Coffee
Supplies the main liquid and the bitter, aromatic flavour of the dish.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the bitterness of the strong coffee.

The step that matters

Adding the hot coffee to the soaked gelatin. Gelatin must be fully softened before it meets the hot coffee, and the mixture must be completely liquid before chilling. If the gelatin is not evenly dissolved, the jelly can set with lumps or uneven firmness.

“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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