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Drink

Coffee, Iced

A chilled coffee beverage made with hot coffee, milk, cream, sugar, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Coffee, Iced

Ingredients

Directions

Make the coffee base

  1. Combine the milk, sugar, and vanilla pod in a saucepan.

  2. Heat the mixture until nearly boiling.

  3. Remove the saucepan from heat.

  4. Add the hot coffee to the mixture.

  5. Let the mixture cool.

  6. Strain the mixture.

Finish and freeze

  1. Stir in the cream.

  2. Freeze the mixture until it reaches the consistency of thick cream.

Serve

  1. Serve with additional castor sugar on the side.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  3. Coffee + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,391 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Coffee
Provides the main coffee flavor and most of the liquid in the base.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the coffee's bitterness.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving a smoother texture after freezing.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the drink and lowers the freezing point, keeping it softer.

The step that matters

Freeze the mixture until it reaches the consistency of thick cream. Freezing without stirring can form hard ice crystals. Sugar and fat in the mixture lower the freezing point and soften the texture, so the drink should be checked for a thick, spoonable consistency rather than left to freeze solid.

“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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