Bacon dish
Bacon ice cream
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Alternative names
| Bacon and egg ice cream
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Course
| Dessert
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Serving temperature
| Cold
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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.
Origins
[
edit
]
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" (Julia Aldrich's first of 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
[
edit
]
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 pureed 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
[
edit
]
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
[
edit
]
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
[
edit
]
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
[
edit
]
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
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Hollweg, Lucas (3 July 2005).
"He's Cooking"
.
The Times
. London
. Retrieved
18 January
2011
.
- ^
Barker, Ronnie; Corbett, Ronnie (26 December 1973). "Ice Cream Parlour Sketch".
3
.
BBC
.
- ^
a
b
"Gross Desserts Fit For A Gourmand"
.
Victoria Advocate
. 5 April 1992
. Retrieved
17 January
2011
.
- ^
"They'd only do this to ice cream on April Fool's Day"
.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
. 1 April 1992
. Retrieved
17 January
2011
.
- ^
"Unusual Ice Cream Flavours on April 1st? It's No Baloney"
.
Toledo Blade
. 1 April 1989
. Retrieved
17 January
2011
.
- ^
Oldenburg, Don (3 August 2003).
"New Ice Cream Trend May Be Hard To Swallow"
.
The Washington Post
. Retrieved
18 January
2011
.
- ^
a
b
c
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
.
- ^
Moore, Victoria (12 January 2001).
"Mustard ice cream, anyone?"
.
The Guardian
. London
. Retrieved
18 January
2011
.
- ^
Blumenthal, Heston (1 June 2002).
"A Burst of Flavour"
.
The Guardian
. London
. Retrieved
19 January
2011
.
- ^
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
.
- ^
Tristem, Andy (2 February 2004).
"Chefs in Michelin spat"
.
Metro
. Archived from
the original
on 12 September 2012
. Retrieved
19 January
2011
.
- ^
Bannerman, Lucy (30 April 2008).
"Heston Blumenthal invents chocolate wine"
.
The Times
. London
. Retrieved
18 January
2011
.
- ^
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
.
- ^
Blum, Matt (27 July 2010).
"The Great Bacon Odyssey: Is Bacon Ice Cream Worth the Effort?"
.
Wired.com
. Retrieved
18 January
2011
.
- ^
Lebovitz, David (9 March 2008).
"Candied Bacon Ice Cream Recipe"
. DavidLebovitz.com
. Retrieved
18 January
2011
.
- ^
"Egg-and-bacon ice cream".
Kitchen Chemistry with Heston Blumenthal
. 2005. Discovery Science.
- ^
Clay, Xanthe (28 October 2008).
"Heston Blumenthal's Big Fat Duck cookbook is put to the test"
.
The Telegraph
. London
. Retrieved
19 January
2011
.
- ^
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
.
- ^
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
.
- ^
Street-Porter, Janet
(24 April 2004).
"My idea of Hell's Kitchen"
.
The Independent
. London
. Retrieved
18 January
2011
.
- ^
Dennis, Tami (2 April 2009).
"Bacon ice cream. No good can come of it"
.
Los Angeles Times
. Retrieved
18 January
2011
.
- ^
"Who's to blame for bacon ice cream"
.
MSNBC
. 9 May 2008. Archived from
the original
on 14 July 2011
. Retrieved
18 January
2011
.
- ^
Hughes, Holly (2009).
Frommer's 500 Places for Food & Wine Lovers
. Frommer's. pp. 476?477.
ISBN
978-0-470-28775-0
.
- ^
Russo, Susan (1 December 2009).
"Bacon gets its just desserts"
.
NPR
.
Archived
from the original on 25 January 2011
. Retrieved
18 January
2011
.
- ^
"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
.
- ^
a
b
Rosenfeld, Everett (13 June 2012).
"The Bacon Sundae is Coming"
.
Time
. Retrieved
18 July
2012
.
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