Week Sixteen: Reimagining a classic

This is the second of my suggested themes! I didn’t want to let it down, but I also bizarrely struggled with what I could make for it. Reimagining classics is what I do with my ice cream all the time; I’ve already made historic versions of vanilla and chocolate, and lots of other flavours - I could make any of them and it would be reimagining a classic. But I thought about what I could do to reimagine a classic that would also be something different to what I’ve done before. What I decided to do was the reverse of what I usually do when I’m not following one of the actual Gunter’s recipes - instead of taking a modern ice cream idea and making it in the style of the Gunter’s confectioners, I decided to take a classic Gunter’s ice cream and remake it in the modern style. I’ve said all along that I do understand modern ice cream science - it’s how I learned ice cream making, and I do still make some ice creams like it. It’s just that I didn’t enjoy making ice cream like that. I’m a massive perfectionist, if I’m making ice cream at home like a lot of other people then I’m going to make the best ice cream at home. However, there is a useful quirk to my perfectionism: if I can tell myself going into it that it can’t be perfect, then I can let go of the perfectionism and enjoy it a whole lot more. 

I’ll put this into ice cream context: for the first six months I had an ice cream machine, I only made vanilla ice cream. I was always tinkering with the percentages - what if I make it 17% fat rather than 16%, or use an extra 0.02% of the stabiliser, and because I’m a mathematician and formulator, these percentage gains have to come from somewhere, you can’t make more than 100% of a recipe so putting up the milk powder has to come at decreasing something else - and much as I do love the maths, this was driving me mad. And, if we’re honest, no one could tell the difference between an MSNF of 7% and an MSNF of 7.4%. I have data tables that show no strong pattern. But I knew, and slowly went insane over it. Fortunately, I read a book called Gelato Messina and, for a book that I’ve never made a single recipe from, it can claim a lot of credit for my ice cream journey. It includes an old gelato recipe, the oldest the author could find, and he said everyone should make it once (presumably he meant everyone reading the book and wanting to make gelato, not actually encouraging every person to buy an ice cream machine just for this purpose.) I read this and decided to make old recipes over and over again, and in doing so I could tell myself that my ice cream isn’t going to be perfect but it’s going to be something different that not everyone is doing, and in doing so the perfectionist search went. I was making flavours within a week or two of starting historic ice creams. 

The difficulty of making a Gunter’s ice cream in modern style is that that is done all the time. There are untold numbers of ice cream shops out there offering a nearly endless variety of flavours, and if you’re armed with an ice cream machine you ate only limited by your imagination. And yet, what are the most popular flavours of ice cream worldwide? Vanilla, chocolate, mint choc chip, strawberry and cookies’n’cream. Of those, three of them have direct recipes within the Gunter’s books, one of them has a parallel with biscuits popular at the time, and only mint choc chip is really ‘new’, having come about in the mid 20th century. The trick was going to be in finding a classic historic ice cream that we don’t really have these days. There are plenty; how often do you get brown bread or parmesan ice cream now? A lot of the fruits also fell out of favour, finding orange ice cream these days is a challenge. I decided to go for pineapple. Pineapple as an ingredient did have a little hey day in the 1950s but in their true hey day a single pineapple was worth thousands and had guards. Pineapples were a status symbol, although I think the fact that all three Gunter’s confectioners had a recipe for pineapple ice cream tells us it had already fallen somewhat by this point; they were too valuable to eat in the days that a pineapple could be rented. 

When I make Gunter’s pineapple ice cream, I mash up fresh pineapple and leave it to infuse in the cream base, and it turns out very nicely. For the modern take on pineapple ice cream, I’m using Penn State ice cream science via Dana Cree, and using pineapple essence and added the fresh pineapple via a homemade ripple. Only Nutt gives a clue on how much pineapple to use - his recipe uses a gill and a half of pineapple syrup, the recipe of which involves making pineapple chips which involves leaving pineapple slices in sugar and repeatedly boiling it down. Maybe one day I’ll make pineapple ice cream like this, but for now I’ll just take his gill and a half; Jarrin and Jeanes both just tell you to use as much pineapple as will flavour it, and I know from past experience that using a gill and a half flavours it for me. A gill is a quarter of a pint, so a gill and a half is three eights of a pint. For historic reasons that I will one day explore, Nutt’s pint would have been the same as a US pint, so a gill and a half is the same as six US fluid ounces, or three quarters of a US cup.

Gunter’s pineapple ice cream

Ingredients

215.65g single (19% butterfat) cream (23.4%)

362.28g whipping (39% butterfat) cream (39.32%)

170.13g caster sugar (18.46%)

173.54g pineapple purée (pineapple blended to a mush) (18.83%)

(I actually do include the pineapple as part of the formulation; whilst some of it does get strained out, a good amount of it doesn’t. It means the final ice cream won’t be exactly what I calculate in terms of fat, water and sugar percentages, but it won’t be far off enough to affect anything.)

Method

1. Put the creams and pineapple purée into a mixing bowl.

2. Whisk whilst gradually adding the sugar, and continue to whisk for approximately another minute.

3. Leave to infuse for several hours, preferably overnight.

4. Whisk again just prior to churning.

5. Strain mixture through a sieve.

6. Churn according to your ice cream machine’s instructions, stopping at soft serve texture.

7. Put into a container and freeze for at least four hours.

Hello My Name Is Pineapple Ice Cream

Ingredients for ice cream

14.82g skimmed milk powder (1.998%)

111.12g caster sugar (14.98%)

281.63g whipping (39% butterfat) cream (37.9671%)

296.41g whole (3.7% butterfat) milk (39.96%)

37.05g liquid glucose (4.995%)

0.74g guar gum powder (0.0999%)

7.41g pineapple essence (10% of total weight)

Ingredients for pineapple ripple 

173.5g pineapple purée (66.66%)

43.38g caster sugar (16.67%)

43.38g liquid glucose (16.67%)

Method for ice cream

1. Mix the milk powder and sugar together.

2. Put the milk, cream and glucose into a saucepan.

3. Bring dairy/glucose mixture to a boil, then add the milk powder/sugar mixture and whisk it in.

4. Reduce heat and simmer for two to three minutes.

5. Remove from heat and cool the mixture; for best food safety, use an ice bath to quickly cool to 20C degrees.

6. Add the guar gum and pineapple essence, and whisk in thoroughly.

7. Put mixture in refrigerator and leave to chill for several hours, preferably overnight.

8. Whisk again just prior to churning.

9. Churn according to your ice cream machine’s instructions, stopping at soft serve texture.

Method for pineapple ripple

1. Put all ingredients in a saucepan and bring to boil, stirring constantly.

2. Reduce heat and continue to stir constantly.

3. Once mixture has thickened and become jam like, take off heat and cool.

Assembly

1. Put a third of the ice cream in a container, with half the pineapple ripple on top; repeat do you have three layers of ice cream and two of pineapple ripple.

2. Using a large spoon, very lightly fold the mixtures together but not so much they fully combine.

3. Put into freezer and freeze for at least four hours, preferably overnight.

Both recipes produce good pineapple ice creams, but they are very different to each other. The Gunter’s is not as strong in flavour, but is still undeniably pineapple and it’s a very real, fresh pineapple flavour. Hello My Name Is has a stronger pineapple flavour, but it’s a lot sweeter and you can tell it’s not ‘real’ - it’s still nice though, and will be influenced by the quality of the essence. HMNI is also a lot chewier, but Gunter’s is creamier. It’s interesting to see the differences in what makes a good ice cream for the era, and I think I’m going to do more eras and direct comparisons from now on.