Name: Coffee Cream Ices
Ingredients: 4 eggs; ½ pint of cream; 2 oz. coffee berries; 3 oz. castor sugar

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 Ices

Ingredients

4 eggs
½ pint of cream
2 oz. coffee berries
3 oz. castor sugar

Directions

Make the base

Make a thick custard by whisking together the cream and eggs.
Add the freshly roasted coffee berries and let it sit until fully flavored.
Strain the mixture through a coarse sieve.

Sweeten and freeze

Sweeten to taste and pour into small molds.
Place the molds on ice to freeze.

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.

Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Cream + coffeetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,339 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,344 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Eggs: Add richness and help thicken the custard base for a firm, smooth texture.
Cream: Provides fat that gives the frozen ice a rich, creamy mouthfeel.
Coffee berries: Supply the coffee flavor as they steep into the cream.
Castor sugar: Sweetens the mixture and softens the frozen texture by lowering the freezing point.

“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.