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Dessert

Coffee Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from coffee, sugar, cream, arrowroot, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Coffee Ice Cream

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Coffee Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Scald 1 pint of cream.

  2. Stir in the arrowroot mixed smooth in a little cold cream.

  3. Add the sugar and coffee.

  4. Mix in the remaining cold cream.

Infuse the coffee

  1. Pour 1 pint of cream over 1 pint of hot roasted Mocha coffee and cover.

  2. Let it scald for 5 minutes over boiling water.

  3. Let it stand for 10 minutes.

  4. Strain it into 1 pint of cold cream.

Make the custard and freeze

  1. Heat the mixture.

  2. Pour it over 4 beaten eggs mixed with ¾ pound of sugar.

  3. Freeze the mixture.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Coffee + arrowroottop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Sugar + arrowroottop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 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

Cream
Provides richness and fat, giving the ice cream a smooth, creamy texture.
Coffee
Supplies the main flavour, concentrated by using very strong, roasted coffee.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and softens the frozen texture by lowering its freezing point.
Eggs
Thicken the custard as they heat, adding richness and body.
Arrowroot
Thickens the base and gives a smooth body that resists separating.

The step that matters

Heating the custard. Eggs thicken as they heat, but too much heat can scramble them. Keeping the mixture gentle lets it thicken smoothly rather than curdle.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, sugar, cream, egg. 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.

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