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 ↓
Iced Coffee
Ingredients
Directions
Mix the cold coffee, single cream, new milk, and castor sugar together.
Freeze the mixture until it reaches a creamy consistency.
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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Cream + sugartop 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).
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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).
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Cream + milktop 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
- Cold coffee
- Provides the main coffee flavour and liquid base of the drink.
- Single cream
- Adds fat, which makes the frozen mixture smoother and richer in texture.
- New milk
- Adds moisture and dairy flavour while keeping the mixture lighter than cream alone.
- Castor sugar
- Sweetens the drink and lowers the freezing point, keeping ice crystals smaller.
The step that matters
Freezing to a creamy consistency. Freezing too fast or too long forms large ice crystals, making the texture grainy and icy. Stop once the mixture is creamy and slushy, as the fat and sugar help keep it smooth.
“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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