Skip to main content
Drink

Cafe Frappe

A chilled coffee beverage made with brewed coffee, heavy cream, sugar syrup, vanilla, whipped cream, and ice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cafe Frappe

Ingredients

Directions

Make the coffee base

  1. Brew strong coffee using a drip coffee pot and let it cool.

  2. Mix the cooled coffee with 4 cups of heavy cream and sweeten with sugar syrup.

  3. Stir in 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract.

  4. Fold in 1 cup of whipped cream gently.

Serve

  1. Place a large lump of ice in a punch bowl, pour in the mixture, and serve in glasses.

  2. Optionally, freeze the mixture to a mush and serve in tall glasses.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Cream + syruptop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Heavy cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the coffee.
Sugar syrup
Sweetens the coffee and balances its bitterness.
Whipped cream
Adds airy lightness and a softer texture to the drink.
Strong brewed coffee
Provides the main coffee flavour and aroma.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped cream gently. Folding keeps the air trapped in the whipped cream. Stirring hard would deflate it and make the drink flat and dense.

“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.

You might also like

Brown Coffee with EggBrown Coffee with Egg175 recipesOrange SyrupOrange Syrup47 recipesEgg CoffeeEgg Coffee20 recipesOrgeat SyrupOrgeat Syrup13 recipes