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Dessert

Coffee Jelly

A gelatin set coffee dessert sweetened to taste and served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Heat the coffee to boiling point and sweeten to taste.

  3. Add the dissolved gelatine to the coffee and stir well.

  4. Strain the mixture into a mould rinsed with cold water.

Set and serve

  1. Set the mould on ice or in a very cool place until firm.

  2. Serve with whipped cream, filling the center if using a circular mould.

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 jelly as it cools.
Brewed coffee
Provides the main flavour and liquid base of the jelly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the bitterness of the coffee.

The step that matters

Add the dissolved gelatine to the coffee and stir well. Gelatine must be fully dissolved and evenly mixed through the hot coffee, otherwise it can set unevenly and leave soft or rubbery patches in the finished jelly.

“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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