Ice Cream

Public health historian David Merritt Johns has written an unusually thorough and lucid piece in The Atlantic on this unlikely research phenomenon: a series of scientific studies shows a health benefit to eating ice cream. And the researchers have been trying—and mostly failing—to find flaws in the results. What’s really going on here? Nutrition health research is fiendishly difficult. It’s prone …

Introduction Vegan ice cream is everywhere these days, and it’s not just herbivores who demand them. Some pleasure-seekers are trying to reduce their impact on the planet. Others are bothered by the treatment of dairy cows at industrial farms. Others are lactose-intolerant. Others are just jumping on a bandwagon. A marketing executive at a national brand told me that interview …

Buying too many ice cream books is one of the job hazards here at Underbelly. To help save your valuable time and money and bookshelf real estate, we offer the following highly opinionated recommendations. These are tailored to our typical readers: enthusiasts, pros, and aspiring pros who are familiar with the basics, and want more.  Ice Cream, 7th Edition, Goff+Hartel …

Early drafts of the fruit theory posts have been slow going—and people have been bugging me for something they can use. So here’s a sample sorbet recipe, developed with strawberries, but which also works well with peaches (they have similar solids and sugars levels).  This will be the best sorbet you’ve ever had, if you use good fruit. I’m quite …

  We’ve been working on fruit flavors for several months now. It’s been a purée of trial and error, scientific research, computer analysis, discovery of new ingredients, and trips to the farmers’ market. Now that good fruit is finally showing up here in the northern hemisphere, we’re ready to share what we’ve learned.  Why so much wonkyness? Isn’t it supposed …

  Welcome to our second deep-dive into flavor. I’ve had more requests for chocolate than for all others put together, and I’m not surprised. Who doesn’t love it? And who hasn’t had problems with it? Chocolate’s up there with coffee when it comes to technical challenges, but it presents its own unique vexations.   Chocolate also resembles coffee in that …

  Farmland in Banga, Burundi. Photo by Christine Vaufrey. From dailycoffeenews.com The coffee ice cream method described in the previous post has been so successful at preserving the origin character of coffee that it’s turned into a minor fetish. I can’t stop making batches with different coffees, and eating them, which is getting me into some trouble with my girlfriend, …

[Edited 9-17-2020 to adjust ice cream cooking time/temperature]   Welcome to the first post that focusses on a single flavor. We’re starting with coffee, not because it’s simple—it’s maybe the most complex flavor we’ll have the pleasure of disecting. We’re going to take on this complexity because coffee flavor illustrates so many principles, and because there’s a mountain of high …