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Dessert

Coffee Mange

A gelatin-based coffee dessert made with milk, strong coffee, sugar, and thick cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 Mange

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Combine gelatin and milk in a saucepan.

  2. Heat until dissolved, stirring occasionally.

  3. Brew 1 pint of strong coffee and strain it into the saucepan with the milk.

  4. Add caster sugar and stir over heat until the sugar melts.

  5. Pour the mixture into a basin and let it cool.

  6. Mix in thick cream.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into moulds and let set.

  2. To serve, turn out of the moulds onto a fancy dish.

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. Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

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

  4. Coffee + sugartop 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, wobbly dessert once chilled.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, soft texture to the set dessert.
Caster sugar
Sweetens the dessert and balances the bitterness of the coffee.
Strong coffee
Provides the main coffee flavour and aroma.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding cream. Cream added to a very hot mixture can thin the liquid and weaken the set. Cooling it first helps the gelatine set the dessert firmly and keeps the cream 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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