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Dessert

Coffee Jelly

A chilled dessert made by setting strong coffee with gelatin and serving with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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

Make the jelly

  1. Brew 1½ pints of strong coffee and sweeten to taste.

  2. Soak ¼ pound of sheet gelatin in water until softened, then strain it.

  3. Mix the strained gelatin with the coffee until fully dissolved.

  4. Pour the mixture into a mold and refrigerate until cold and firm.

Serve

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

  3. Coffee + gelatintop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sheet gelatin
Sets the coffee liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Strong coffee
Provides the main flavor and liquid that the gelatin sets.

The step that matters

Dissolving the gelatin fully into the coffee. Gelatin must be softened, strained and completely dissolved in warm liquid; any undissolved granules or lumps leave weak or grainy spots once the jelly sets.

“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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