Skip to main content
Dessert

Coffee Cream

A chilled custard made with coffee, milk, sugar, egg yolks, and isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Coffee and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,202 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Coffee Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the coffee milk

  1. In a saucepan, pour boiling milk over ground coffee and cover.

  2. Let it cool nearly, then strain through a fine cloth.

Make the cream

  1. Mix in powdered sugar and salt.

  2. Stir in beaten egg yolks until thickened, then strain again.

  3. Add dissolved isinglass and mix well.

Set and chill

  1. Grease a mold with sweet almond oil and pour in the mixture.

  2. Set the mold in ice to chill.

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. Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).

  3. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the cream as they set when gently heated, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Isinglass
Gelatin-like setting agent that firms the cream so it holds its shape when chilled.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that carries the coffee flavour and forms the body of the cream.
Ground coffee
Supplies the main coffee flavour and aroma infused into the hot milk.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and rounds out the bitterness of the coffee.

The step that matters

Stirring in the beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can curdle or turn grainy if overheated or added too quickly. Stir steadily and keep the heat gentle so the cream thickens smoothly, then strain to remove any lumps.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Cocoafits better
  2. Hazelnutfits about as well
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, milk, sugar, egg. 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.

More coffee cream recipes

Ice 7Spanish 5Substitute 4 See all 124 →

You might also like

Coffee Ice CreamCoffee Ice Cream91 recipesCoffee CustardCoffee Custard27 recipesAlmond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipes