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Dessert

Coffee Jelly

A chilled coffee dessert made with coffee, corn starch, sugar, and topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. In a bowl, mix boiling coffee with corn starch and sugar until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a mold and set it on ice to harden.

Serve

  1. Once set, 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Coffee + corntop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together247 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Corn + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the coffee liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it sets.
Coffee
Forms the main liquid and provides the coffee flavour of the jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the coffee so its bitterness is balanced to taste.

The step that matters

Pouring the mixture into the mold and chilling it on ice. Corn starch must be fully mixed in and the liquid cooled enough to set; starch thickens as it cools, so the jelly firms only if it chills undisturbed until fully set.

“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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