Skip to main content
Dessert

Coffee Cream

A chilled dessert made from coffee, sugar, gelatin, and cold cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatin in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Place the soaked gelatin over boiling water.

Make the mixture

  1. Add the hot coffee and sugar to the gelatin, stirring until dissolved.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the cold cream.

  3. Strain the mixture into a mold that has been wet with cold water.

Set

  1. Refrigerate until set.

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. Coffee + creamtop 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).

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, sliceable cream as it cools.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, soft texture, with fat carrying flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the coffee and balances its bitterness.
Strong coffee
Provides the main coffee flavour and aroma.

The step that matters

Stirring the gelatine until fully dissolved before adding the cream. Gelatine only sets when it is completely dissolved and evenly dispersed. Undissolved granules or uneven mixing leave weak or patchy areas once chilled, so the mixture should be smooth before the cold cream goes in and before it is strained into the mold.

“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.

More coffee cream recipes

Ice 7Spanish 5Substitute 4 See all 124 →

You might also like

Coffee Ice CreamCoffee Ice Cream91 recipesCoffee CustardCoffee Custard27 recipesCoffee CakeCoffee Cake21 recipesCoffee Bavarian CreamCoffee Bavarian Cream14 recipes