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Dessert

Coffee Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with coffee, sherry, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Coffee and sherry work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 69 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Coffee Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil down the sherry to ⅓ cup.

  2. Dissolve the gelatin in 1 pint of hot water.

Make and set the jelly

  1. Add the coffee and sherry to the gelatin mixture.

  2. Stir well and pour into a mold.

  3. Refrigerate until set.

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 + sherrytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Coffee + gelatintop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  3. Gelatin + sherrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together138 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatin
Sets the liquid into a firm, wobbly jelly when chilled.
Coffee
Provides the coffee flavour and dark colour of the jelly.
Sherry
Adds a fortified wine aroma and sweetness, concentrated by boiling down.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatin in hot water. Gelatin must fully dissolve in hot liquid before the coffee and sherry are added. Undissolved granules leave gritty or uneven patches and weaken the set once chilled.

“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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