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Dessert

Coffee Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with brewed coffee, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Coffee and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,344 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Coffee Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatine in a pint of cold water.

  2. Dissolve the soaked gelatine in a pint of boiling water.

Make and set

  1. Stir in the brewed coffee and sugar until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a mold and set in a cool place to stiffen.

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 + 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, wobbly jelly as it cools.
Brewed coffee
Provides the main flavour and liquid base of the jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the coffee and balances its bitterness.

The step that matters

Soak the gelatine before dissolving. Gelatine must hydrate in cold liquid before it dissolves in hot water; adding it dry or to boiling water directly can leave lumps and weaken the set.

“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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