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Dessert

Coffee Mousse

A chilled dessert made by mixing coffee, sugar, egg, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 Mousse

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Pour hot coffee over the beaten egg and sugar mixture.

  2. Cook the mixture over low heat until it thickens.

Finish and freeze

  1. Cool the mixture, then fold in the whipped cream.

  2. Mould the mixture and freeze it in salt and ice for 4 hours.

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).

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

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

  5. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Hot coffee
Provides the main flavour and liquid base of the mousse.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the texture of the frozen mousse.
Beaten egg
Thickens the coffee mixture as it cooks and helps it set into a custard.
Heavy cream
Whipped air makes the mousse light and creamy in texture.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture over low heat until it thickens. Egg proteins set gently at moderate temperatures. Too much heat makes the egg scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth thickened custard.

“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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