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Dessert

Coffee Jelly

Coffee jelly is a gelatin dessert made with coffee, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Gelatin and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,778 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Coffee Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Soak the gelatin in ½ pint of cold water for 2 minutes.

  2. Add 1 cup of sugar and 1 pint of hot, strong coffee to the soaked gelatin.

  3. Strain the mixture into a mold.

Set and serve

  1. Set the mold in a cool place to set.

  2. Serve with 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. Gelatin + sugartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + coffeetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,344 recipes

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

  3. Gelatin + coffeetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together146 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatin
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable jelly as it cools.
Coffee
Provides the main flavour and dark colour of the jelly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the bitterness of the strong coffee.

The step that matters

Soak the gelatin in cold water first. Gelatin must hydrate in cold water before it is dissolved in hot liquid. If it goes straight into hot coffee, it can clump and set unevenly, giving a grainy or lumpy 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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