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Dessert

Coffee Bombe

A chilled coffee-based dessert made with coffee, cream, 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: Cream and sugar 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 Bombe

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse the cream

  1. In a saucepan, heat the ½ pound roasted Mocha coffee beans over medium heat, shaking until hot.

  2. Pour the 1 pint cream over the heated coffee and cover the saucepan. Let it sit hot (but not boiling) for 1 hour.

  3. Strain the cream to remove the coffee beans.

Make the custard

  1. In a thick saucepan, combine the 8 egg yolks, 1 pound sugar, and strained cream.

  2. Heat the saucepan over low heat, stirring until the mixture thickens.

  3. Dissolve the 1½ ounces gelatin in the ⅓ cup hot water and set aside.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the dissolved gelatin for 2 minutes.

Finish and freeze

  1. Whip the ½ pint cream to stiff peaks.

  2. Quickly and lightly fold in the whipped cream.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a tightly covered mold and freeze as directed for frozen puddings, or pour into paper cases and freeze for 3 hours.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Roasted mocha coffee-berries
Gives the cream its coffee flavour during the hot infusion.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream into a custard and add richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and softens its frozen texture.
Gelatine
Sets the mixture so it holds its shape when frozen.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, and whipped cream gives a light, airy body.

The step that matters

Heating the custard gently. Over high heat, egg yolks can scramble and curdle instead of thickening smoothly. Low heat with constant stirring thickens the custard evenly.

“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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