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Dessert

Coffee Jelly

A chilled coffee-flavored gelatin dessert made with strong coffee, sugar, and gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Coffee and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,344 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Coffee Jelly

Ingredients

Directions

Dissolve the gelatine

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

  2. Pour boiling coffee over the gelatine and stir until dissolved.

  3. Add boiling water and sugar, then stir until the sugar is dissolved.

Set and serve

  1. Strain the mixture and pour it into molds rinsed with cold water.

  2. Chill until set and serve with thin 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. 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 liquid into a wobbly jelly as it cools.
Strong black coffee
Provides the main flavour and dark colour of the jelly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the bitterness of the coffee.
Boiling water
Dilutes the coffee and helps dissolve the gelatine and sugar.

The step that matters

Dissolving the gelatine fully. Gelatine must be completely dissolved in the hot liquid before chilling. Any undissolved granules will leave specks and an uneven, weak set, so stir until no grains remain.

“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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