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Dessert

Coffee Cream

A custard-like cream made with milk, thick cream, roasted coffee, sugar, egg yolks, and isinglass.

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

Prepare the coffee infusion

  1. Boil the milk and thick cream together.

  2. Roast the raw coffee in a frying pan until it is a good color.

  3. Add the roasted coffee to the boiled milk and cream.

  4. Cover the mixture.

  5. Let the mixture stand for 1 hour.

  6. Strain the mixture through a tammy.

  7. Squeeze the tammy to extract the coffee flavor.

Make the custard

  1. Mix in enough clarified sugar to sweeten.

  2. Boil the mixture until smooth.

  3. Beat the egg yolks.

  4. Stir the beaten yolks into the cream mixture.

  5. Rub the mixture through the tammy again.

  6. Squeeze the tammy to extract the flavor.

Set and chill

  1. Add enough isinglass to set it.

  2. Pour the mixture into a mold surrounded by ice.

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. Cream + coffeetop 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. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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

Milk
Provides the liquid base and creamy body of the dish.
Thick cream
Adds richness and fat for a smooth, silky texture.
Raw coffee
Supplies the coffee flavor once roasted and steeped into the base.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream through gentle heating and add richness.
Isinglass
Sets the mixture into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.

The step that matters

Stirring the beaten yolks into the cream mixture. Hot liquid added quickly to egg yolks can scramble them. Adding the yolks gradually and keeping the mixture below a boil lets it thicken smoothly.

“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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