When it comes to ice cream, innovation is tradition, even to the point where vegetable ice cream sounds like a good idea

  Ice cream lovers fall into two camps: those who love experimenting with innovative, exotic flavors and the purists, who remain loyal to vanilla.  Wild experimentation is nothing new, it can be traced back to the earliest ice cream cooks.

While I’m not averse to experimenting and trying new things, at no time, ever, even in a toddler-induced, sleep deprived haze did I ever say, my family needs to eat more vegetables. I know, I’ll make them into ice cream. Nope, never went there. But I guess someone did. Cook books from the Georgian and Victorian eras chronicle some pretty ah—interesting—recipes for ice cream that are definitely worth mentioning here.

A is for Asparagus

I found a mention of asparagus ice cream from the end of the nineteenth century in some of the articles I read, but could not actually turn up the book it was supposed to be in, nor did any of the other cook books I have on hand have a recipe for it. So I thought I’d include a modern one (yes, I really did find one) that seems to be the closest to other historical recipes. I have not tried this, so try it at your own risk:

Asparagus Ice Cream

½ to 2 pounds asparagus, depending on how strong you want the flavor

6 large egg yolks

1/4 to 1/2 cup sugar

1 1/3 cups whole milk

1/4 cup heavy cream

Trim and cut asparagus. Cook in boiling salted water until tender; rinse under cold water. Reserve a few tips for garnish. (Ham slices and hollandaise sauce are other suggested garnishes. Just saying…) Puree asparagus and cream together in blender until smooth.

Mix egg yolks and sugar in a large bowl. In a saucepan, bring the milk a boil. Remove from heat. Slowly add to egg yolks and sugar, stirring well. Return mixture to sauce pan and heat gently until mixture coats the back of a spoon. Add asparagus puree and pour entire thing through a sieve.

Cool in the refrigerator, then churn according to your ice cream maker’s directions.

If asparagus isn’t to your liking, then how about channeling your inner Popeye for some spinach ice cream? From Marshall’s famed book of ices. (1888)

Iced Spinach a la Creme (Epinards Glacees ala Creme).

Put 2 or 3 handfuls of spinach in cold water with salt, and a very tiny pinch of soda; let it come to the boil; strain off and press the water from it.

Boil half a pint of milk and stir it on to 4 yolks of eggs, and put it on the stove again to thicken—don’t let it boil; Add a little apple green to colour it, and to half a pint of the custard add a small dessert-spoonful of castor sugar and a pinch of salt. (Castor sugar is superfine sugar, finer than normal sugar, but not as fine a powdered sugar.)

Mix with the spinach, pass through the tammy, and freeze; (A tammy is a sieve.) Add, when partly frozen, half a teacupful of whipped cream sweetened with a very slight dust of castor sugar.

Freeze dry and mould in a Neapolitan box in the cave for about 1½ hours; (A Neapolitan box was a rectangular ice cream mold. The cave is a double walled box where ice and salt were mixed between the two walls, dropping the temperatures inside of the box to freezing. Freeze dry meant to freeze solid.)

Cut out in cutlet shapes. Dish on a border of iced cream, and iced cream for the centre; for this use 1 pint of cream, 1 dessert-spoonful of castor sugar, ditto of orange flower water, and a few drops of vanilla. Freeze dry and mould in a border mould. (Marshall, 1888)

For the slightly less adventurous, this one sounds kinda good.

Cucumber Cream Ice (Creme de Concombres).

Peel and remove the seeds from the cucumber, and to 1 large-sized cucumber add 4 ounces of sugar and half a pint of water; cook till tender. Then pound and add to it a wine-glass of ginger brandy and a little green colouring and the juice of two lemons; pass through the tammy, and add this to 1 pint of sweetened cream or custard. Freeze and finish as usual. [Marshall, 1888]

But of course, I’ve saved the best for last! Truffle Ice Cream. I hate to disappoint though, when I refer to truffle, I’m not talking about the chocolate kind, yeah, really!

Truffle Ice Cream

In 1768, M. Emy wrote the first cookbook completely devoted to ice cream—L’Art de bien faire les glaces d’office; ou Les vrais principes pour congeler tous les rafraichissemens.  Within the covers of this tome, he penned a recipe for truffle ice cream (truffles as in the fungi that grow underground.)

 He directed that the truffles should be cooked in water and salt, then ground, and mixed with the cream. Emy admonished those who attempted his recipes to taste, taste, taste, adjusting the ingredients accordingly. (While that’s good advice for any cook, I can only imagine what adjustments this ice cream might have needed.) The cream was then cooked after the fashion of other ice creams, strained through a sieve and frozen. Emy didn’t say what it tasted like. (Quinzio, 2002) I would say I wonder why, but that might sound a mite snarky.

Let me know if you try any of these. I’d love to hear about it!

For more on Ice Cream in Jane Austen’s World, click HERE.

Find Cookbook References HERE