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Dessert

Coffee Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with strong coffee, sugar, and water, set in a mold and served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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. Dissolve the gelatine in the boiling water.

  2. Add the strong coffee and sugar, stirring until combined.

  3. Pour into a mold and refrigerate until set.

Serve

  1. Serve with 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 + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

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

  3. 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 coffee liquid into a firm, wobbly jelly as it cools.
Strong coffee
Provides the main flavour and liquid base of the jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the coffee and balances its bitterness.

The step that matters

Dissolve the gelatine fully in the boiling water. Undissolved gelatine leaves grainy specks and weak set spots. Gelatine needs hot liquid to disperse evenly before the coffee is added, so it can form a uniform gel when chilled.

“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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