Skip to main content
Dessert

Coffee Mousse

A chilled dessert made with coffee, eggs, sugar, and heavy cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 coffee

  1. Pour boiling water over the raw coffee and boil for a few minutes, then strain.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs and sugar together until well combined.

  2. Mix the coffee with the egg and sugar mixture and cook for four minutes, stirring constantly.

Finish and freeze

  1. Allow the mixture to cool, then beat the heavy cream until stiff and fold it into the coffee mixture.

  2. Pack the mixture into a container and freeze for four to six 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. Egg + sugartop 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

Eggs
Thicken the coffee mixture when cooked and add richness and structure to the mousse.
Heavy cream
Whipped to stiff peaks, it adds airy volume and a light, creamy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the mousse and helps stabilise the egg mixture while it cooks.
Raw coffee
Provides the main coffee flavour when steeped in boiling water.

The step that matters

Cook the coffee and egg mixture while stirring constantly. Eggs thicken as they heat, but if they get too hot or stand still they can scramble. Constant stirring keeps the heat even so the mixture becomes smooth and thick.

“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.

You might also like

Coffee Ice CreamCoffee Ice Cream91 recipesCoffee CustardCoffee Custard27 recipesCoffee CakeCoffee Cake21 recipesCoffee Bavarian CreamCoffee Bavarian Cream14 recipes