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Dessert

Coffee — Continued

A chilled coffee-based dessert made with powdered sugar, egg yolks, milk, sweet cream, and roasted coffee berries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 — Continued

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. In a saucepan, mix powdered sugar and egg yolks for 10 minutes.

  2. Add boiling milk and stir for 2 minutes.

  3. Pour into a copper basin on a hot stove.

  4. Stir gently until thickened, but do not boil.

  5. Remove from heat.

  6. Add sweet cream and mix for 2 minutes.

  7. Stir in freshly-ground coffee and mix for another 2 minutes.

  8. Cover and let infuse for 30 minutes.

  9. Strain through a fine sieve into a freezer.

  10. Freeze.

Make the coffee berry cream

  1. Roast coffee berries until oily.

  2. Mix roasted berries with warm milk and caster sugar in a stewpan.

  3. Cover and let cool off the fire.

  4. Beat egg yolks with milk.

  5. Strain into the mixture.

  6. Stir over heat until it simmers.

  7. Pour into a basin and let cool.

Freeze and serve

  1. Pack an ice-box with ice.

  2. Turn the cream into it.

  3. Work with a spoon until solid.

  4. Serve in glasses or on a folded napkin.

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. Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

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

  3. Cream + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  4. Sugar + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

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

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Powdered sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps the egg yolks combine smoothly with the milk.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set gently with heat, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the frozen ice a creamy, smooth texture.
Freshly-ground coffee
Provides the main coffee flavour and aroma in the custard base.
Roasted coffee berries
Infuse the milk with roasted coffee flavour and aroma.
Caster sugar
Sweetens the coffee berry mixture and softens the frozen texture.

The step that matters

Stir gently until thickened, but do not boil. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but past a certain temperature they scramble and curdle. Stirring gently over a moderate heat keeps the custard 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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