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 Frappe
Ingredients
Directions
Add sugar to the coffee and stir until dissolved.
Pack the mixture in a freezer.
Churn as you would ice cream.
Serve in glasses.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,339 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
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Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Strong black coffee
- Provides the main coffee flavor and bitterness that the sugar balances.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the coffee and lowers its freezing point, keeping the frozen texture softer.
- Cream
- Adds fat and richness, giving a smoother, creamier mouthfeel to the frozen drink.
The step that matters
Pack the mixture in a freezer. The mixture must freeze evenly while being churned. Freezing it solid without churning produces large ice crystals, which make the texture coarse and icy rather than smooth.
“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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