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Dessert

Coffee Cream

A coffee-flavored custard made with milk, ground coffee, egg yolks, sugar, salt, isinglass, and set in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Coffee and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,202 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Coffee Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the infusion

  1. In a saucepan, pour boiling milk over ground coffee and cover.

  2. Let it cool nearly to room temperature, then strain through a fine cloth.

Make the custard

  1. Mix in powdered sugar and salt.

  2. Stir in the beaten egg yolks until well combined.

  3. Heat gently until it begins to thicken, then strain again through a fine cloth.

  4. Add the dissolved isinglass and mix well.

Set and serve

  1. Grease a mold with sweet almond oil and pour the mixture in.

  2. Set the mold in ice until firm.

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. Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

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

  2. Coffee + almondtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together374 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetylpyrazine (roast).

  3. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard on gentle heating and enrich it with fat for a smooth, creamy texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that carries the coffee flavour and sets into a creamy body.
Isinglass
Gelatin-like protein that helps the custard set firm when chilled.
Ground coffee
Provides the main coffee aroma and flavour when steeped in the hot milk.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the bitterness of the coffee.

The step that matters

Heat gently until it begins to thicken. Egg yolks set when heated, so too much heat can scramble them into lumps. Heating slowly and stirring keeps the custard smooth and lets it thicken evenly.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (coffee, milk, sugar, egg):

  1. Cocoafits better
  2. Hazelnutfits about as well
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against coffee, milk, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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