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Dessert

Coffee Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with coffee, sugar, and water, served with flavored whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Gelatin and cream match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,628 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Coffee Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soften the gelatin in the cold water.

  2. Add the boiling water, sugar, and strong coffee to the softened gelatin.

  3. Stir until well dissolved.

Set and serve

  1. Strain the mixture through cheesecloth into a mold.

  2. Refrigerate until set.

  3. Serve with whipped cream flavored with a little orange extract.

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. Gelatin + creamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Gelatin + sugartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Coffee + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together326 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

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

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

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, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Strong coffee
Provides the main coffee flavor and liquid for the jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly and balances the bitterness of the coffee.

The step that matters

Stir until well dissolved. Gelatin must fully dissolve in the hot liquid; undissolved granules leave gritty spots and weak patches, and the jelly may not set evenly.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Bananafits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

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