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Dessert

Coffee Cream

A custard made with milk, eggs, sugar, flour, coffee, and almond extract, topped with whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Coffee Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Sweeten and flavor the egg whites with almond extract.

  3. In another bowl, beat the sugar with the egg yolks. Add the flour and strong coffee to the egg yolk mixture.

Make the custard

  1. Pour the hot milk over the egg yolk mixture, stirring constantly until it thickens.

Serve

  1. Top the custard with the cooked egg whites when serving. Serve hot or chilled.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

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

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Coffee + almondtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together374 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks to add light, airy structure to the topping.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they heat and set.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilize the beaten egg whites.
Flour
Thickens the custard and helps keep it smooth.
Strong coffee
Adds coffee flavor and liquid to the custard.

The step that matters

Pour the hot milk over the egg yolk mixture, stirring constantly until it thickens.. Adding hot milk gradually and stirring constantly keeps the egg yolks from scrambling. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly so the custard thickens smoothly.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sugar, flour, coffee):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Hazelnutfits about as well
  3. Cocoafits about as well
  4. Chestnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, flour, coffee. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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