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Dessert

Coffee Cream

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Infuse the coffee

  1. Boil the milk and cream together.

  2. Roast the raw coffee in a frying pan until it is a good color.

  3. Add the roasted coffee to the boiled milk and cream.

  4. Cover and let it stand for 1 hour.

  5. Strain the mixture through a tammy.

  6. Squeeze well to extract the coffee flavor.

Make the custard

  1. Mix in enough clarified sugar to sweeten the mixture.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and stir them into the cream mixture.

  3. Rub the mixture through the tammy.

  4. Squeeze the mixture through the tammy again.

Set and chill

  1. Add enough isinglass to set the mixture.

  2. Pour the mixture into a mold surrounded by ice.

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. 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. 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

Milk
Provides the liquid base and creamy body of the cream.
Thick cream
Adds fat for a rich, smooth texture and mouthfeel.
Raw coffee
Supplies the coffee flavor, which develops when the beans are roasted and steeped.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream as they cook gently and add richness.
Isinglass
Sets the mixture into a firm, sliceable gel as it cools.

The step that matters

Add enough isinglass to set the mixture. Isinglass is a gelatin-like setting agent. Too little leaves the cream loose, and too much makes it rubbery, so the amount must be measured against the mixture's volume.

“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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