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Dessert

Coffee Filling

A sweet coffee-based filling made with coffee, cream, sugar, corn starch, eggs, used for cakes.

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 Filling

Ingredients

Directions

Make the coffee custard

  1. Make a cup of strong black coffee using Mocha and Java.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of cream and 1 cup of sugar to the coffee.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil while stirring.

  4. Blend 2 heaping teaspoons of corn starch with a little cold coffee, then stir it into the boiling coffee.

  5. In a bowl, beat 2 eggs.

  6. Gradually pour the hot coffee mixture over the beaten eggs while stirring briskly.

  7. If the mixture is not thick enough, set it over boiling water and stir until it thickens slightly, but do not boil to avoid curdling.

Assemble

  1. Pour this filling over a layer of cake, adding more layers as desired, and finish with Coffee Icing.

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. Coffee + corntop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set and thicken the custard as they cook gently in the hot coffee mixture.
Corn starch
Thickens the coffee mixture into a smooth, spreadable filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the bitterness of the coffee.
Strong black coffee
Provides the main flavor of the filling.

The step that matters

Adding the hot coffee to the eggs. Pouring hot liquid into beaten eggs too quickly can scramble them. Adding it gradually while stirring warms the eggs evenly so the custard stays smooth. Keeping it below boiling avoids curdling.

“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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