Having been around the block with the composition of ice cream over the last week, it’s worth asking at this point what type of substance ice cream actually is. Every so often I come across a summer newspaper article on ice cream where the author pronounces sagely that ice cream is classified by science as […]
READ ONOne of the great early ice cream lovers, at least according to legend, was the Roman emperor Nero. He was said to have sent fleet-footed slaves high into the Apennines to fetch quantities of snow, which his cooks would combine with honey and other flavorings for the enjoyment of all his guests. Obviously this wasn’t […]
READ ONAs passionate as so many women are about ice cream, it’s no surprise they didn’t sit around waiting for some man to invent the home ice cream maker. In fact it was Nancy Johnson of Philadelphia who took matters into her own hands in 1846, inventing the classic hand-crank ice cream machine. Up until that […]
READ ONThis seems a good point to bring up churning. The McGee recipe, obviously, didn’t call for it. Why not? Well, as you can gather from the below posts, ice cream makers and churns are all about motion: freezing a small amount of mix against a cold surface, scraping it off, and freezing some more. The […]
READ ONThe basic technology of ice cream makers — be they high-end commercial machines or low-tech home models — is basically the same. A cold surface is created, usually with the help of some sort of refrigerant (or ice brine). An ice cream mix is exposed to that surface where it freezes, only to be scraped […]
READ ONThough enthusiasts will forever wax poetic about the flavors of their favorite frozen treats — Super Chocolate Orgasmo Death-in-a-Cup or Triple Ripple Vanilla Road Monkey — it’s really texture that defines a great ice cream. That is why Ben & Jerry’s was happy to sell ten dollar “cookbooks” detailing the components of their top flavors […]
READ ONNothing, not really. Even Mrs. Pastry, whose’s got an ice cream palate as discerning as a spectrograph, declared: “I do love the grainy taste of old-fashioned homemade ice cream, it reminds me of hot summer block parties when I was little.” So then the McGee ice cream is a nice exemplar of a certain rustic […]
READ ONWell, freezing, obviously. But what manner of freezing? Which is to say, if it’s so cold in that bowl, why isn’t the mix freezing into a solid block? Milk freezes solid, after all. So does cream, if left in the freezer for an extended period. So what keeps the mixture ice-cream textured? The answer is […]
READ ONI’ll warn you at the outset that some of these photos are a little dark. The remnants of hurricane Fay (mostly clouds unfortunately, no rain for my parched lawn) are still hanging over us. I waited all day yesterday to no avail, so today I decided to go for it. To hell with perfect light, […]
READ ON