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Dessert

Coffee Jelly

A chilled dessert made by setting coffee with gelatin and sugar, served with cream and sugar.

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 gelatin and sugar in the strong coffee, stirring until smooth.

  2. Strain the mixture into molds.

Set and serve

  1. Refrigerate until set.

  2. Serve with cream and sugar.

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. Sugar + coffeetop 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
Forms the gel network that lets the coffee set into a firm jelly.
Sugar
Sweetens the coffee and softens its bitterness.
Very strong coffee
Provides the liquid base and the coffee flavour of the jelly.

The step that matters

Dissolving the gelatine fully. Gelatine must dissolve completely into the warm coffee before straining and chilling. Undissolved granules leave specks or weak spots, and the jelly may not set evenly.

“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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