Ice Cream Cookbook Competition

You can never have enough ice cream recipes.

I recently had a look at Matt O'Connor's The Icecreamists (if anyone reading this lives in the Aberdeen area, you can read my feature about it in the Press and Journal!) and decided, in the Olympic spirit, to compare it to another ice cream tome - The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz, which I just bought from Amazon and am tremendously excited about. I shall be scoring the books gymnastics-style: in other words, I shall devise a system so complicated that it almost looks arbitrary, and none of ye shall even have a hope of understanding it. There will be categories; there will be thousandths of points; and points awarded will be out of a possible fifteen and a half. There may even be a last-minute appeal by Japan that throws the medal table into uncertainty.

Round 1: Beauty

Yes, it's the swimsuit competition! The first thing to notice about The Icecreamists is its astonishing photography, by Anders Schonnemann. I don't think I've ever seen food photography this good. Simultaneously witty and sexy, without too much of the default soft-focus you get in most food books, the styling and photos really give a great feel of what the author's trying to say: that ice cream can be adult, modern, even outrageous. It's rock and roll. And the font, cover and black and pink printing really add to this. In contrast, Lebovitz's book is much more pedestrian image-wise. The text is easier to read, but the photos, though attractive, are only so-so.

Result: The Icecreamists 15.144/The Perfect Scoop 12.783

Round 2: Ideas

At first, I was pretty excited to lay my hands on The Icecreamists. Ooh, A Chocwork Orange, sez I. Mmm, Doughnut Stop Believin'. Yummy. And sounds exciting. But the second or third time you read the book through, you realise there's not as many recipes as all that. It's sort of cheating, I think, to have big sections on ice cream cocktails, milkshakes, sundaes etc. In Lebovitz's book, instructions on how to make these are given in additional notes at the bottom of the real recipes, not padded out to make sections on their own. Plus Lebovitz includes many more recipes for mix-ins, cones, cookies, sauces and so on, and information on techniques such as rippling and stracciatella. On count, I reckon Lebovitz has at least three times as much useful (i.e. cookable) content. Also, he doesn't waste my time bitching about his marriage or boasting about his celebrity friends. His personal anecdotes are food-related and charming.

Result: The Icecreamists 12.896/The Perfect Scoop 15.168

Round 3: Recipe Quality

Though it's been pretty level pegging so far, now is the time for The Icecreamists to choke spectacularly. The real shame about this book is that while it's good on ideas and great on style, it doesn't carry through on the details. O'Connor has developed a gelato-style base which he uses for nearly every ice cream recipe; nothing wrong with that. What is wrong is that he hasn't bothered to tweak it slightly depending on how he flavours his ice cream. Every recipe has the same amount of sugar - wouldn't you want less sugar in a recipe that also included a load of mashed-up After Eights? - cream, and egg yolks. In contrast, Lebovitz has painstakingly worked out the tweaks that perfect each recipe. Some have an extra egg yolk to make up for a runnier add-in or more sugar to counteract a tart ingredient. Some are lighter, some richer. O'Connor's recipes really read more like, 'Make the base as usual, then chuck in what you like!' - which I could work out on my own. In this sense, it's not really a recipe book at all - more of an idea book.

Result: The Icecreamists 9.685/The Perfect Scoop 15.355

Round 4: Technique

Lebovitz carefully tells you exactly how to check the consistency of your custard; how to coat your frozen dessert in chocolate; how to caramelize nuts to mix in to the final product; how to make your own cones. The book is full of tips that show just what an expert he is. Reading it is like having someone friendly in the kitchen with you, telling you what to watch out for, giving you advice on when something's ready. It's amazing. The Icecreamists, however, gives the same instructions word for word for every recipe in a section. I'm not convinced that Matt O'Connor actually knows how to cook. If he does, he's not letting on. 

Result: The Icecreamists 10.562/The Perfect Scoop 15.445

FINAL RESULT

The Perfect Scoop scoops the gold. By miles.

I shall now celebrate my judging prowess with a cone of strawberry froyo, which I made from The Perfect Scoop book on Friday. Mmm.

It's All Gone to Custard

Mmm, custardy goodness. Love the retro packaging too.

Excited by the sudden improvement in the weather, and inspired in part by reading Matt O'Connor's new book The Icecreamists last week (on which more later if I get around to it), I purchased myself a new ice cream maker this week. (My old one is leaking weird liquid, so I have consigned it to the bin. I wouldn't have thought it of you, John Lewis! It was own brand and everything!) I like to be prepared when I cook, so I've been doing some research on ice cream recipe books as well. As we know, ice cream can be made in various different styles - the American, or more specifically Philadelphia, style is to freeze cream with sugar and fruit, and the French or Italian style is to make a thin custard with egg yolks and then freeze that for a richer flavour and less chance of ice crystals forming.

I have purchased David Lebovitz's book after reading this article in the Guardian, as well as the excellent reviews, index &c on Amazon, and of course will be consulting my uncle Timothy Walker's book If You Can Read You Can Cook. Uncle Tim is a great ice cream maker and I have fond memories of basil ice cream and strawberries at a barbecue circa 1995.

Reading all these books' careful instructions on how to make a custard base got me to thinking about how fundamentally complicated and delicate an operation custard-making is, and how strange it is therefore that, as Alan Davidson says, it is fundamental to Western cooking (think of dishes like quiche Lorraine or bread and butter pudding, as well as the hot stuff we pour over pies and crumbles). He details how it was made in medieval times - before easily controllable hobs - by being baked in bread ovens after the bread had been taken out, or cooked slowly in a chafing dish under which hot coals were laid, presumably to allow for better control over the heat. He also mentions some medieval tips (important to know if you had unreliable equipment) on how to thicken it, such as mixing in breadcrumbs, or a gelling agent made from carrageen moss. Usually it was eaten as a semi-solid dish – rather like how Americans eat it, as 'pudding' – rather than as a sauce to pour over other things, a change of role that occurred in the nineteenth century.

It is no wonder that the cornflour-based custard powder made by 'Alfred Bird FCS, Experimental Chemist', as his shopfront described him, was a godsend to cooks in the mid-nineteenth century. No more curdling, no more scrambled eggs. I've made ice cream with Ambrosia custard before but have never quite stooped to using powder. And what with my modern gas hob, quality saucepan with no hot spots and ready supply of ice to ice-bath my cream in and avoid overheating of the mixture, I don't really have any excuse to do so.

Two more custard facts: did you know that the word comes from croustade, or tart, and in Britain came to denote the filling rather the whole thing? And, delightfully, that in the 1920s one pâtisserie in Hollywood turned their entire operation over to making the custard tarts that were thrown in films, after perfecting a recipe for a throwable tart with the perfect slurp?