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Dessert

Coffee Cream

A chilled coffee-flavored custard made with gelatin, sugar, coffee, cream, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold milk for 1 hour.

Make the coffee mixture

  1. Add boiling coffee and sugar to the gelatine. Stir until dissolved.

  2. If not fully melted, place over boiling water and stir until dissolved.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool.

  4. Stir in the cream.

Set and serve

  1. Rinse a mold with cold water.

  2. Strain the mixture into the mold and set in the ice to harden.

  3. Turn out onto a plate and serve immediately.

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

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

  3. Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

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

  5. Cream + milktop 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable cream when chilled.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, soft texture with fat.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the bitterness of the coffee.
Strong coffee
Provides the main coffee flavour and aroma.

The step that matters

Fully dissolve the gelatine before cooling. Undissolved gelatine stays as specks and grains, so the mixture sets unevenly and loses its smooth texture. Stirring until clear ensures the gelatine is evenly dispersed before it cools and firms.

“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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