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Dessert

Jelly, Coffee

A chilled coffee-flavored gelatin dessert made with gelatine, water, sugar, coffee, vanilla, and served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Jelly, Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Pour boiling water over the soaked gelatine.

  3. Add sugar, strong coffee, and vanilla; stir until dissolved.

  4. Strain the mixture through a napkin into a glass dish.

  5. Refrigerate until firm.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream and sugar.

  2. Mould and serve with whipped 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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  2. Coffee + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,391 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  4. Vanilla + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 when chilled.
Strong coffee
Provides the coffee flavour and colour of the jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the bitterness of the coffee.

The step that matters

Dissolving the gelatine. Gelatine must be fully dissolved in the hot liquid before chilling. Undissolved granules leave gritty or weak spots, and the jelly may fail to set evenly.

“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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