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Dessert

Coffee Blanc-mange

A chilled coffee gelatin dessert topped with whipped cream.

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 Blanc-mange

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine and coffee

  1. Soak the gelatine in enough water to cover for 1 hour.

  2. Prepare 1 quart of strong coffee and sweeten to taste.

Set and serve

  1. Keep the coffee hot and add the dissolved gelatine, stirring well.

  2. Strain the mixture into a mould rinsed in cold water.

  3. Set the mould on ice until cold.

  4. Serve with whipped cream.

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

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

  3. Coffee + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the coffee liquid into a firm, wobbly body as it cools.
Strong coffee
Provides the main flavour and liquid base of the dessert.
Sugar
Sweetens the coffee to taste before it is set.
Whipped cream
Adds a light, rich contrast to the firm coffee set as a topping.

The step that matters

Stirring the dissolved gelatine into the hot coffee. Gelatine must be fully dissolved and evenly mixed, or it will set in lumps or unevenly. Keeping the coffee hot helps it stay liquid so the gelatine disperses before setting begins.

“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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