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Dessert

Coffee Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with coffee, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Coffee and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,344 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Coffee Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water until soft.

  2. Add boiling water, boiling coffee, and sugar. Stir until dissolved.

  3. Heat on the stove for 2 minutes.

Set and serve

  1. Strain into moulds.

  2. Refrigerate until hardened.

  3. 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. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, wobbly jelly as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the bitterness of the coffee.
Coffee
Provides the main flavour and dark colour of the jelly.

The step that matters

Soak the gelatine in cold water until soft. Gelatine must hydrate fully before it dissolves evenly in hot liquid. If it is added dry or clumps, the jelly sets with lumps or weak patches.

“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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