Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 43,437 recipes mention both. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)
Directions
Make the coffee
Pour boiling water over the coffee in a pot.
Cover quickly and place on the back of the stove.
Add sugar and let it cool.
Freeze and serve
Press the mixture through a sieve into a can for freezing.
Let it sit in the freezer for 5 minutes before turning the freezer.
Serve in glasses topped with sweetened whipped cream.
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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.
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Sugar + creamtop 5% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together43,437 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Coffee + creamtop 8% of all pairsAroma overlaplowMentioned together2,339 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
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Coffee + sugartop 8% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned 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
- Coffee
- Provides the main coffee flavor and aroma that defines the drink.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps soften the texture of the frozen coffee.
The step that matters
Cover quickly and place on the back of the stove. Covering the hot coffee traps aroma and keeps volatile flavor compounds from escaping into the air. Leaving it uncovered lets much of the fragrance evaporate, which weakens the final flavor.
“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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