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Coffee Cream

A chilled coffee-infused cream custard made with cream, milk, sugar, salt, coffee, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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

Infuse the cream

  1. Boil the cream and milk together.

  2. Add sugar and coarse sea salt.

  3. Roast the coffee beans until well done.

  4. Add the hot coffee to the cream mixture.

  5. Cover the mixture and let it infuse until completely cool.

Add the egg yolks

  1. For cups, add 1 egg yolk to each cup.

  2. Strain the cream through a fine sieve to mix in the egg yolk.

  3. Cool the cream.

Set in cups

  1. Place cups in a water bath.

  2. Cover the cups to prevent steam from entering.

  3. Protect the cups from dust.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  3. Coffee + beanstop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together289 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Cream + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,339 recipes

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

  5. Milk + beanstop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,266 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Provides fat for richness and a smooth, silky texture.
Milk
Adds liquid and body, softening the flavour of the cream.
Egg yolk
Thickens the cream as it gently sets, giving a custard-like texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the bitterness of the coffee.
Coffee beans
Infuse the cream with roasted coffee aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Gentle setting in the water bath. Egg yolks thicken the cream gently, and too much heat makes them scramble and turn grainy. A water bath keeps the temperature even, and covering the cups stops steam from dripping onto the surface.

Swap the beans

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

  1. Cocoafits better
  2. Hazelnutfits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, milk, sugar, coffee, 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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