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Coffee Sauce for Ice Cream

A coffee-based sauce made with egg yolks, sugar, coffee, and whipped cream, served over ice 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 Sauce for Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar until light and creamy.

  2. Add the coffee and cook over a double boiler, stirring constantly, until it thickens.

Cool and serve

  1. Let the mixture cool.

  2. Fold in the whipped cream.

  3. Serve over plain ice cream in glasses.

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).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as their proteins set when gently heated.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the sauce and balances the bitterness of the coffee.
Strong brewed coffee
Adds a roasted, bitter flavor that gives the sauce its character.
Whipped cream
Adds fat and air, making the finished sauce light and creamy.

The step that matters

Cooking the coffee and yolk mixture over the double boiler. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with gentle heat, but they curdle or scramble if overheated. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the sauce smooth.

“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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