Bacon ice cream

Last updated

Bacon ice cream
French toast with bacon ice cream.jpg
French toast with bacon ice cream, maple syrup and cinnamon tuile
Alternative namesBacon and egg ice cream
Course Dessert
Serving temperatureCold

Bacon ice cream (or bacon-and-egg ice cream) is an ice cream generally created by adding bacon to egg custard and freezing the mixture. The concept of bacon ice cream originated in a 1973 sketch on the British comedy series The Two Ronnies as a joke; it was eventually created for April Fools' Day by a New York ice cream parlour in 1982. In the 2000s, the English chef Heston Blumenthal experimented with ice cream, making a custard similar to scrambled eggs and adding bacon to create one of his signature dishes. It now appears on dessert menus in other restaurants.

Contents

Origins

Ice cream is generally expected to be a sweet food, eaten as a dessert, even though there is evidence of savoury ice creams eaten in Victorian times. [1] Bacon ice cream originated as a joke, a flavour that no one would willingly eat, in the 1973 "Ice Cream Parlour Sketch" by The Two Ronnies , where a customer requests cheese and onion flavoured ice cream followed by smokey bacon. [2]

In 1992, bacon-and-egg ice cream was created as an April Fools' Day experiment at Aldrich's Beef and Ice Cream Parlor in Fredonia, New York. [3] Ten years earlier, co-owner Scott Aldrich was challenged by a gravy salesman to make beef gravy ice cream, which he did for April Fools' Day of 1982. Although it was reportedly "their most disgusting" creation, Aldrich's went on to release other unusual flavours on April Fools' Day, such as "chocolate spaghetti ice cream" (the first of Julia Aldrich's many contributions),"ketchup and mustard swirl", "pork and beans" or "sauerkraut and vanilla" in 1991. In 1992, they made 15 US gallons (57 L; 12 imp gal) of bacon-and-egg ice cream which he gave away free to anyone who would try it. The ice creams generally received positive reviews. [4] [5] In 1992, The Victoria Advocate reported,

Despite the disgusting names, most of [Aldrich's] prank flavors taste good, he said. Bacon and egg tastes like a slightly nutty vanilla, though the faint flavor of flaky egg yolk sometimes pushes through. [3]

In 2003 an ice cream parlour, "Udder Delight", opened in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, specialising in "outlandish" ice cream flavours. Among other flavours, such as their award-winning peanut butter and jelly ice cream, they have created a bacon ice cream that tastes like butter pecan. The owner, Chip Hearn, had included the flavour along with 17 others in an invitation-only focus group, where the tasters were allowed to suggest changes and give opinions on the flavour. [6]

Heston Blumenthal

The English chef Heston Blumenthal creates unusual dishes using molecular gastronomy. His restaurant, the Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, has won three Michelin stars among other achievements. As early as 2001, Blumenthal created savoury ice cream flavours such as mustard grain and crab. [7] [8] In an article explaining the concept of "flavour encapsulation", Blumenthal explained that flavour is much more intense in encapsulated bursts, rather than when dispersed in a solution; therefore, the more that eggs are cooked, the more that the proteins stick together. This creates pockets of egg flavour in the ice cream, which release as it melts in customers' mouths. [9]

[Blumenthal's] bacon and egg ice cream came about through his interest in "flavour encapsulation": the principle of which means a single coffee bean crushed in your teeth while drinking hot water will taste much more of coffee than the same crushed bean dissolved in the water. One day, using that principle, he over-cooked the egg custard for an ice cream, so that it practically became scrambled. He puréed that and made an ice cream from it, that had an immense eggy flavour... [which] was not particularly pleasant. Which was when he decided to see if he could incorporate the sweet tones of smoked bacon into an egg ice cream. Boy, did it work.

Traditional ice cream is frozen egg custard with flavours added. Blumenthal whisks egg yolks with sugar until the sugar interacts with the proteins in the yolk, creating a network of proteins. The entire substance turns white, at which point flavouring can be added and cooked in. While stirring the mixture, Blumenthal cools it as fast as possible using liquid nitrogen. [7]

Blumenthal's bacon-and-egg ice cream, now one of his signature dishes, [11] along with his other unique flavours, has given him a reputation as "The Wizard of Odd" and has made his restaurant a magnet for food enthusiasts. Blumenthal has stated that one ambition is to create an ice cream with flavours released in time-separated stages; for example, bacon and egg followed by orange juice or tea. Once he perfects the technique of separating the flavours, he would attempt mussels followed by chocolate. [7]

In the 2006 New Years Honours List, Blumenthal was awarded Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE), the United Kingdom's fourth highest order of chivalry, for his services to food. [12]

Recipes

Bacon ice cream incorporated in a dish Nitro-Scrambled Egg and Bacon Ice Cream.jpg
Bacon ice cream incorporated in a dish

As bacon ice cream was created in 1992 and came to prominence in the 2000s, there is no traditional recipe. Recipes generally involve adding bacon to a standard sweet ice cream recipe, often vanilla but other suggestions include coffee, rum or pecan. The saltiness of the bacon highlights the sweetness of the ice cream. [13] According to one Wired.com article, the bacon should be candied before addition, a process which involves baking the bacon in a sugar syrup. This has the benefit of sweetening the bacon, similarly to pancakes in some parts of the United States. [14] [15]

Heston Blumenthal variation

Blumenthal's recipe uses ice cream without flavouring, but which tastes of an egg. In the recipe featured in The Big Fat Duck Cookbook , the bacon is lightly roasted with the fat on, then infused in milk for 10 hours. The infused mix is precisely heated with egg and sugar to overcook the eggs, increasing the "eggy" flavour, then sieved, put through a food processor, churned, and frozen. The ice cream is served with caramelised French toast, a tomato compote, a slice of pancetta hardened with maple syrup, and tea jelly. [16]

Blumenthal has since updated his recipe to include ten hours of soaking the bacon in a vacuum-packed bag before baking. He has also changed the presentation so that the unfrozen ice cream is injected into empty egg shells, then dramatically scrambled at the customer's table in liquid nitrogen, giving the impression of cooking. [17]

Reception

Bacon ice cream has received a mixed reception; as a combination of sweet and savoury flavours, it was designed to be controversial. In 2004, rival chef Nico Ladenis thought the Michelin system was doing a "great disservice to the industry" by hailing Blumenthal as a genius for egg-and-bacon ice cream, saying that originality alone should not merit a Michelin star. Blumenthal pointed out that Ladenis had never tried the aforementioned ice cream. [18]

Trevor White has suggested that Blumenthal had latched onto a culture where diners cannot get enough of the new and are spoiled by choice, comparing the food to a "freak show". [19] Janet Street-Porter has criticised Blumenthal's cooking as pretentious. She attempted to make his bacon-and-egg ice cream from the recipe published in his The Big Fat Duck Cookbook, altering the recipe slightly due to her hectic workload and guessing when she did not have the right tools. The result she described as nauseating and "too sickly for words". [20]

The ice cream sparked debate in the Los Angeles Times when food writer Noelle Carter described bacon ice cream as perfection but the health section put up a photograph of a heart bypass and the headline "Bacon ice cream. No good can come of it". [21] The Delaware "Udder Delight" ice cream maker, Chip Hearn, who made bacon ice cream appears to have done so partly as a gimmick to get people into his shop since he allows customers to taste any flavour in the store. He felt that his flavours differentiated him from the many other parlours on the shore and many people come in to try bacon ice cream only to buy something else. [22]

Notable uses

Bacon ice cream has been recreated by other chefs in recent years. For example, it appears on the menu at Espai Sucre in Barcelona, a restaurant that specialises in desserts, with descriptions such as "innovative" and "spectacular". [23] In the United States, bacon was one of the themes for dessert at the Fancy food show. In 2006, two separate contestants created versions of bacon ice cream in the reality series Top Chef. [24] Celebrity chef Bob Blumer won a Texas ice cream making competition with a bacon ice cream. Originally planning to use candied bacon, he changed at the last moment to do a bacon brittle ice cream. [25] Chef Michael Symon made bacon ice cream in the first season of the Food Network's The Next Iron Chef competition. Andrew Knowlton, a judge, dismissed it as not original. But Symon managed to progress in the competition and eventually win. Burger King rolled out a "bacon sundae", vanilla ice cream with caramel, chocolate, bacon bits, and one strip of bacon, in the summer of 2012 in the US. [26] It was tested in Nashville in April. [26]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dessert</span> Sweet course that concludes a meal

Dessert is a course that concludes a meal. The course consists of sweet foods, such as cake, biscuit, ice cream and possibly a beverage such as dessert wine and liqueur. Some cultures sweeten foods that are more commonly savory to create desserts. In some parts of the world there is no tradition of a dessert course to conclude a meal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ice cream</span> Frozen dessert

Ice cream is a frozen dessert typically made from milk or cream that has been flavoured with a sweetener, either sugar or an alternative, and a spice, such as cocoa or vanilla, or with fruit, such as strawberries or peaches. Food colouring is sometimes added in addition to stabilizers. The mixture is cooled below the freezing point of water and stirred to incorporate air spaces and prevent detectable ice crystals from forming. It can also be made by whisking a flavoured cream base and liquid nitrogen together. The result is a smooth, semi-solid foam that is solid at very low temperatures. It becomes more malleable as its temperature increases.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trifle</span> Custard dessert

Trifle is a layered dessert of English origin. The usual ingredients are a thin layer of sponge fingers or sponge cake soaked in sherry or another fortified wine, a fruit element, custard and whipped cream layered in that ascending order in a glass dish. The contents of a trifle are highly variable and many varieties exist, some forgoing fruit entirely and instead using other ingredients, such as chocolate, coffee or vanilla. The fruit and sponge layers may be suspended in fruit-flavoured jelly, and these ingredients are usually arranged to produce three or four layers. The assembled dessert can be topped with whipped cream or, more traditionally, syllabub.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caramel</span> Confectionery product made by heating sugars

Caramel is an orange-brown confectionery product made by heating a range of sugars. It is used as a flavoring in puddings and desserts, as a filling in bonbons or candy bars, or as a topping for ice cream and custard.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hungarian cuisine</span> Culinary tradition

Hungarian or Magyar cuisine is the cuisine characteristic of the nation of Hungary, and its primary ethnic group, the Magyars. Hungarian cuisine has been described as being the spiciest cuisine in Europe. This can largely be attributed to the use of their piquant native spice, Hungarian paprika, in many of their dishes. A mild version of the spice, Hungarian sweet paprika, is commonly used as an alternative. Traditional Hungarian dishes are primarily based on meats, seasonal vegetables, fruits, bread, and dairy products.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crème caramel</span> Custard dessert with soft caramel on top

Crème caramel, flan, caramel pudding, condensed milk pudding or caramel custard is a custard dessert with a layer of clear caramel sauce.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Soufflé</span> Baked egg-based dish

A soufflé is a baked egg dish originating in France in the early 18th century. Combined with various other ingredients, it can be served as a savoury main dish or sweetened as a dessert. The word soufflé is the past participle of the French verb souffler, which means to blow, breathe, inflate or puff.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Danish cuisine</span> Culinary traditions of Denmark

Danish cuisine originated from the peasant population's own local produce and was enhanced by cooking techniques developed in the late 19th century and the wider availability of goods during and after the Industrial Revolution. Open sandwiches, known as smørrebrød, which in their basic form are the usual fare for lunch, can be considered a national speciality when prepared and garnished with a variety of ingredients. Hot meals are typically prepared with meat or fish. Substantial meat and fish dishes includes flæskesteg and kogt torsk with mustard sauce and trimmings. Ground meats became widespread during the industrial revolution and traditional dishes that are still popular include frikadeller, karbonader and medisterpølse. Denmark is known for its Carlsberg and Tuborg beers and for its akvavit and bitters, but amongst the Danes themselves imported wine has gained steadily in popularity since the 1960s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cheesecake</span> Cheese-based dessert

Cheesecake is a dessert made with a soft fresh cheese, eggs, and sugar. It may have a crust or base made from crushed cookies, graham crackers, pastry, or sometimes sponge cake. Cheesecake may be baked or unbaked, and is usually refrigerated.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heston Blumenthal</span> English chef

Heston Marc Blumenthal is an English celebrity chef, TV personality and food writer. His restaurants include the Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, a three-Michelin-star restaurant that was named the world's best by the World's 50 Best Restaurants in 2005.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Fat Duck</span> Restaurant in Bray, Berkshire, England

The Fat Duck is a fine dining restaurant in Bray, Berkshire, England, owned by the chef Heston Blumenthal. Housed in a 16th-century building, the Fat Duck opened on 16 August 1995. Although it originally served food similar to a French bistro, it soon acquired a reputation for precision and innovation, and has been at the forefront of many modern culinary developments, such as food pairing, flavour encapsulation and multi-sensory cooking.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cremeschnitte</span> Puff pastry dessert

A cremeschnitte, also known as vanilla slice or custard slice, is a custard and chantilly cream cream cake dessert commonly associated with the former Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. However, its exact origin is unknown. This dish remains popular across Central Europe and the Balkans in various variations, all of which include a puff pastry base and custard cream.

Parlour is a brand of frozen dessert currently produced by Nestlé. Parlour comes in many different flavours and is available mainly in Canada. Originally produced by Sealtest Ice Cream Parlor in the United States as an ice cream, it no longer meets the legal definition of ice cream due to a change in the recipe; the high content of palm oils. Parlour now competes with bigger brands of ice cream such as: Chapman's, Breyers and others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dinner by Heston Blumenthal</span> Restaurant in London, England

Dinner by Heston Blumenthal is a restaurant in London, England, created by Heston Blumenthal. Menu items are based on historical British dishes, which were researched by food historians and through the British Library. The restaurant's décor resembles antique British periods. Dinner's opening drew interest within the industry, and reviews have been positive. Particular dishes have received praise, including the Meat Fruit, a chicken liver mousse created to look like a mandarin orange.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Crab ice cream</span> Ice cream made with crabmeat

Crab ice cream is a sweet flavour of ice cream with crab. It is offered in some food establishments, particularly ice cream parlours, such as Heston Blumenthal's The Fat Duck restaurant, and the Venezuelan Coromoto.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pie in American cuisine</span> History and cultural significance of pies in American cuisine

Pie in American cuisine has roots in English cuisine and has evolved over centuries to adapt to American cultural tastes and ingredients. The creation of flaky pie crust shortened with lard is credited to American innovation.

References

  1. Hollweg, Lucas (3 July 2005). "He's Cooking". The Times . London. Retrieved 18 January 2011.[ dead link ]
  2. Barker, Ronnie; Corbett, Ronnie (26 December 1973). "Ice Cream Parlour Sketch". 3. BBC.
  3. 1 2 "Gross Desserts Fit For A Gourmand". Victoria Advocate . 5 April 1992. Retrieved 17 January 2011.
  4. "They'd only do this to ice cream on April Fool's Day". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette . 1 April 1992. Retrieved 17 January 2011.
  5. "Unusual Ice Cream Flavours on April 1st? It's No Baloney". Toledo Blade . 1 April 1989. Retrieved 17 January 2011.
  6. Oldenburg, Don (3 August 2003). "New Ice Cream Trend May Be Hard To Swallow". The Washington Post . Retrieved 18 January 2011.
  7. 1 2 3 Derbyshire, David (17 May 2001). "Does ice cream cut the mustard?". The Telegraph . London. Archived from the original on 21 April 2013. Retrieved 18 January 2011.
  8. Moore, Victoria (12 January 2001). "Mustard ice cream, anyone?". The Guardian . London. Retrieved 18 January 2011.
  9. Blumenthal, Heston (1 June 2002). "A Burst of Flavour". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 19 January 2011.
  10. Rayner, Jay (15 February 2004). "The man who mistook his kitchen for a lab". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 4 May 2009. Retrieved 15 May 2009.
  11. Tristem, Andy (2 February 2004). "Chefs in Michelin spat". Metro . Archived from the original on 12 September 2012. Retrieved 19 January 2011.
  12. Bannerman, Lucy (30 April 2008). "Heston Blumenthal invents chocolate wine". The Times . London. Archived from the original on 17 May 2008. Retrieved 18 January 2011.
  13. Pruess, Joanna; Lape, Bob; Cole, Leisa (2006). Seduced by Bacon: Recipes & Lore about America's Favorite Indulgence (illustrated ed.). Globe Pequot. p. 166. ISBN   1-59228-851-0 . Retrieved 18 January 2011.
  14. Blum, Matt (27 July 2010). "The Great Bacon Odyssey: Is Bacon Ice Cream Worth the Effort?". Wired.com . Retrieved 18 January 2011.
  15. Lebovitz, David (9 March 2008). "Candied Bacon Ice Cream Recipe". DavidLebovitz.com. Retrieved 18 January 2011.
  16. "Egg-and-bacon ice cream". Kitchen Chemistry with Heston Blumenthal. 2005. Discovery Science.
  17. Clay, Xanthe (28 October 2008). "Heston Blumenthal's Big Fat Duck cookbook is put to the test". The Telegraph . London. Retrieved 19 January 2011.
  18. Day, Elizabeth (1 February 2004). "Chefs with stars in their eyes fail diners, says Michelin chief". The Telegraph . London. Archived from the original on 11 November 2012. Retrieved 18 January 2011.
  19. White, Trevor (14 May 2007). Kitchen Con: Writing on the Restaurant Racket. Arcade Publishing. p. 17. ISBN   978-0-470-84085-6 . Retrieved 14 May 2009.
  20. Street-Porter, Janet (24 April 2004). "My idea of Hell's Kitchen". The Independent . London. Retrieved 18 January 2011.
  21. Dennis, Tami (2 April 2009). "Bacon ice cream. No good can come of it". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved 18 January 2011.
  22. "Who's to blame for bacon ice cream". MSNBC . 9 May 2008. Archived from the original on 14 July 2011. Retrieved 18 January 2011.
  23. Hughes, Holly (2009). Frommer's 500 Places for Food & Wine Lovers. Frommer's. pp. 476–477. ISBN   978-0-470-28775-0.
  24. Russo, Susan (1 December 2009). "Bacon gets its just desserts". NPR . Archived from the original on 25 January 2011. Retrieved 18 January 2011.
  25. "Canadian chef uses maple bacon ice cream to win U.S. contest". CTV . 21 August 2009. Archived from the original on 27 July 2012. Retrieved 18 January 2011.
  26. 1 2 Rosenfeld, Everett (13 June 2012). "The Bacon Sundae is Coming". Time. Retrieved 18 July 2012.