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Dessert

Coffee Ice Cream

A chilled dessert made from coffee, sugar, milk, cream, egg yolks, salt, optional brandy, and walnut pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 custard

  1. Scald the milk with the ground coffee.

  2. Gradually add the hot milk to the slightly beaten egg yolks mixed with sugar and salt.

  3. Cook the mixture over hot water until it thickens.

  4. Remove from heat and add 1 cup of cream; let it stand for 20 minutes.

Chill and freeze

  1. Cool the mixture, then add the remaining cream and brandy.

  2. Strain through double thickness of cheesecloth and freeze until very stiff.

Shape and serve

  1. Shape into individual pyramids using a scoop and roll in chopped walnut meats.

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 + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Coffee + walnuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together289 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Milk + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,738 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they cook and add richness.
Cream
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture that resists iciness.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers the freezing point for a softer scoop.
Milk
Carries the coffee flavour and forms the body of the custard.
Ground coffee
Provides the main coffee flavour when steeped in the hot milk.

The step that matters

Cook the custard over hot water until it thickens. Egg yolks thicken gently as they warm, but overheating can scramble them into lumps. Gentle hot-water heat keeps the custard smooth before straining.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Cocoafits about as well
  2. Walnutthe original
  3. Almondfits about as well
  4. Pecansfits about as well

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