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Dessert

Bavaroise Au CAf£

A chilled coffee-flavored Bavaroise made with ground mocha, milk, egg yolks, sugar, gelatin, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Bavaroise Au CAf£

Ingredients

Directions

Make the coffee custard

  1. Chill the whipped cream in the refrigerator until thoroughly cold.

  2. Add the ground coffee to boiling milk, cover, and let it steep for 15 minutes.

  3. Stir in the sugar until dissolved, then remove from heat.

  4. Gradually mix the hot coffee mixture into the beaten egg yolks while stirring steadily.

  5. Strain the mixture into a clean pot and place it over boiling water, stirring until it thickens slightly without boiling.

Set and finish

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the soaked gelatin and stir until dissolved.

  2. Strain into a bowl and place it on ice to cool.

  3. Once it begins to set, fold in the 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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as they set gently over heat.
Gelatine
Sets the cooled custard so it holds its shape when chilled.
Whipped cream
Adds airy lightness and a creamy, moist texture to the set dessert.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that extracts coffee flavour and makes the custard creamy.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the bitterness of the coffee.

The step that matters

Thickening the custard over boiling water. Egg yolks scramble if they get too hot, so the mixture must be heated gently over simmering water and stirred constantly until it just coats a spoon. Boiling it curdles the custard and ruins its smooth texture.

“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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