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Coffee Cream

A sweetened coffee custard made with milk, sugar, coffee, egg yolks, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and coffee 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 custard

  1. Boil the milk for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the coffee and keep it hot for 1 hour.

  3. Beat the yolks and sugar together.

  4. Strain the hot milk into the yolk mixture and thicken.

Set and shape

  1. Add the melted gelatine and mix well.

  2. Pour into a mold.

  3. For a richer cream, use only 4 yolks, 1 pint of milk, and 1 pint of cream, adding the cream just before the gelatine.

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

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

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

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the hot milk into a rich custard and add richness.
Gelatine
Sets the cream so it holds its shape when unmolded.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and balances the bitterness of the coffee.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream.
Freshly roasted coffee
Gives the cream its coffee flavour and aroma.

The step that matters

Strain the hot milk into the yolk mixture and thicken. Egg yolks set when heated, so pouring hot milk in slowly while whisking keeps them from scrambling. Gentle heat lets the custard thicken smoothly.

“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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