The Pineapple Encore

(Note: I amended the final recipe instructions on 31/03/2024 to correct the amount of zest; you want 1.6%, or multiply the total weight by 0.016) If last week was easy because I already knew the recipe, this week is the complete opposite, but it’s been really fun for me because I got to go back to my early days of ice cream tinkering! Most of what I show you is the result of me having tinkered already; I make small tweaks depending upon the recipe but the big tinkering - me making different forms of ‘faithful’ historic ice cream recipes and running the calculations and making the adjustments and doing it all again - has already happened. But that was for ice cream. I’ve never tinkered with sherbet. Sherbet is essentially a creamy sorbet; it has a  legal definition  in the US, although I don’t know if I’m reading it correctly because it looks as though the margin for butterfat is between 1% and 2% which is a) narrow and b) low (Dana Cree,  writing in 2017 , gave the US def...

First of all, this is a quarter of the way through the year already! It feels to me like 2024 is going by at a pace, I don’t know how you feel? This is a very indulgent week for me. A while ago, when I was adding eggs into my basket for my online food delivery, I saw an option for ostrich eggs. I decided then that I wanted to use an ostrich egg for one ice cream, and when this week’s theme was Eggs, well… I actually got my ostrich egg from an excellent if somewhat odd farm shop that specialises in unusual meat including crocodile meat from their own crocodiles, and with some unusually good fortune for me they happened to have an ostrich egg available when I needed it. I actually got to see the ostriches it came from! I wrapped it in several bags and even seat belted it in my car, although I later read and saw demonstrated that you can stand on ostrich eggs without them breaking so it possibly would have withstood an emergency brake. Having obtained my ostrich egg, then the decision had...

I’ve been talking about the three Gunter’s confectioners - Frederick Nutt, William Jarrin, William Jeanes. There are at least three others who wrote books, but for one reason for another I’ve largely dismissed them. One should have been the most credible, it was  The Confectioner's Oracle  and it was by William Gunter - that’s right, Gunter. He was the son of the owner of Gunter’s, but his book reads like a parody and provides little of use.  The Kitchen Oracle  by Samuel Hobbs is a) hard - and expensive - to find and b) seems to be essentially a menu list, recipes are in there but would be difficult to catalogue. The last is by  Robert Abbot  and is called The Housekeeper’s Valuable Present. I largely dismissed it because it’s a mix of too vague to be used and being much the same as Nutt’s recipe … except in one important area to me: the use of jams in ice creams. Jarrin and Jeanes didn’t even touch on this subject. Nutt included a jam alternate recipe for...

I sort of wish Irish week had come later in the year because I’m going to Ireland and could have used some first hand research, but it didn’t and so I’m going stereotypical instead. Guinness.  “But you said you aren’t a drinker”, I can hear. I’m not. They make 0% alcohol Guinness now. I’d never tried it until last week, as someone who was never a drinker I don’t really feel the need for fake alcohol, it’s not like there’s a taste I’m missing. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t impressed; I had to spoon the foam off because otherwise I could only manage enough in a mouthful to get foam, and I chased it down with several glasses of water. My friend tells me if I was a drinker I’d probably like it more, but that’s like people that tell you a TV show gets better after the first season - maybe it does, but why would I watch it for that long? I did consider adding something else to the ice cream to take away from the taste, like chocolate (malt and chocolate is almost a classic pairing) or vanilla...