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Dessert

Coffee Jelly

A gelatin dessert made with coffee, sugar, and whipped 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 coffee jelly

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in cold water.

  2. Pour hot coffee and sugar over the dissolved gelatine.

  3. Strain the mixture and let it sit until it begins to set.

Finish and chill

  1. Fold in the whipped cream.

  2. Pour into a mold and refrigerate until hardened.

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 liquid into a firm, wobbly jelly as it cools.
Hot coffee
Provides the main coffee flavour and liquid for the jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the coffee and balances its bitterness.
Whipped cream
Adds lightness and a creamy, mild texture to the jelly.

The step that matters

Let the mixture only begin to set before folding in the cream. If the gelatine has set fully, the cream will not blend in evenly and the jelly may become lumpy. If it is still very liquid, the cream will sink or deflate and the jelly will not hold its shape.

“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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