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 Ice
Ingredients
Directions
Infuse the milk
Roast the coffee over low heat until light in color.
Add the roasted coffee to the boiling milk and let it soak for 30 minutes with the lid on.
Make the custard
Mix the egg yolks and sugar.
Stir over low heat until thickened.
Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.
Finish and freeze
Combine the strained mixture with the whipped cream.
Freeze.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,202 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
-
Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,339 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
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Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together4,344 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
-
Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Raw coffee
- Provides the main coffee flavor and aroma once roasted and infused into the milk.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that carries the coffee flavor and sets into the custard.
- Egg yolks
- Thicken the custard as their proteins set with gentle heat, and add richness.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and softens the texture of the frozen ice cream.
- Whipped cream
- Adds fat and air, making the frozen ice cream light and creamy.
The step that matters
Stir over low heat until thickened. Egg yolk proteins set gently around 160°F to 180°F. Too much heat makes them scramble into lumps, so keep the heat low and stir constantly until the custard coats a spoon.
“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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