Skip to main content
Dessert

Coffee Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from coffee, milk, eggs, sugar, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Coffee Ice Cream

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Coffee Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the coffee base

  1. Boil coffee in boiling water for 5 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and add cold water; let steep until clear.

  3. Combine the clear coffee with boiling milk.

Make the custard and freeze

  1. Beat eggs with sugar and add vanilla.

  2. Strain the mixture into a freezer.

  3. Freeze, then pack in molds with ice for 4-5 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Coffee + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,391 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Coffee
Provides the main flavour and aroma of the ice cream.
Eggs
Thicken the custard and add richness and structure to the frozen base.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the texture of the frozen ice cream.
Milk
Forms the creamy body of the base and adds richness.

The step that matters

Let the coffee steep until clear. Steeping and then letting the grounds settle gives a clear, smooth coffee infusion. Adding cold water to the hot coffee helps the grounds sink, so the final ice cream has a cleaner flavour and 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.

More coffee ice cream recipes

Philadelphia 3 See all 119 →

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesCoffee CustardCoffee Custard27 recipesCoffee CakeCoffee Cake21 recipesCoffee Bavarian CreamCoffee Bavarian Cream14 recipes