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Dessert

Coffee Cream

A chilled coffee‑flavored custard served in glasses, made with cream, coffee, egg yolks, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Boil the cream.

  2. In a basin, mix coffee, egg yolks, and sugar.

  3. Allow the cream to cool slightly.

  4. Pour the cooled cream into the basin.

  5. Beat the mixture well.

  6. Strain through a cloth.

  7. Remove the froth.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into three custard glasses.

  2. Place the glasses in a saucepan of boiling water, ensuring the water comes halfway up the glasses.

  3. Keep warm for 15 minutes without boiling or simmering.

  4. Cool the glasses in cold water.

  5. Dry them.

  6. Serve.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Cream + coffeetop 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).

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

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

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg 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
Set the custard into a soft, smooth structure as they cook gently.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the bitterness of the coffee.
Strong black coffee
Provides the main flavour of the custard.

The step that matters

Keep warm without boiling or simmering. Egg yolks set into a smooth custard only with gentle, indirect heat. Boiling or simmering heat can curdle the eggs and leave the custard grainy or watery.

“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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