Essentially, 1989 was modern ice-cream’s year zero. During those epochal 12 months, Mars launched its ice-cream and the first imports of Häagen-Dazs reached the UK. The era of luxury ice-cream was upon us, and the £1bn-a-year British ice-cream market is still reeling from the aftershocks.
Until then, Britain happily ate standard, industrially produced ice-creams. Some of these are made to traditional recipes with milk and cream. Many are amalgams of skimmed milk powders, vegetable oils and stabilisers whipped through with air (known as “overrun”) in order to increase the ice-cream’s volume and give it a soft-scoop consistency.
In contrast, the new-wave “premium” and (no, really) “super-premium” manufacturers make dense ice-creams from whole milk, eggs, cream and exotic natural flavourings. It is this sector that continues to grow, at the expense of the old 2l family tubs of Neapolitan. Ice-cream is now a year-round treat increasingly eaten from swanky 500ml tubs in front of the TV. According to the Grocer, 63% of ice-cream is eaten on the sofa.
Naturally, supermarkets have jumped on this trend, but can any of their own-brand luxury vanillas (and one Ocado exclusive) compete with such marquee brands as now rather ho-hum Häagen-Dazs (5/10)? Enjoy them while you can, incidentally, since a poor 2015 harvest means the price of Madagascan vanilla is soaring.
Waitrose, 1 Madagascan vanilla ice-cream, 500ml, £3.99
The warning to “stand at room temperature for 10 minutes” before serving is good advice (you would need a pickaxe to get into it otherwise) that assumes a patience uncommon among ice-cream eaters. Is it worth the wait? Kind of. It is persuasively thick and smooth. It is creamy, but in a clean, unobtrusive way. However, its flavour, particularly initially, is dominated by dark, toffee-ish demerara sugars; the vanilla (a mix of extract and powder – we’ll come back to this) is a baseline hum, rather than an intoxicating feature.
6/10
Sainsbury’s, Taste the Difference Madagascan vanilla ice-cream, 500ml, £2.85
Made from Jersey cows’ milk, double cream and unrefined cane sugar by a family business in Devon, there is a lot to recommend this ice-cream. It is dense and rich, ambrosially and expressively creamy (in a hint-of-rice-pudding way) and not overly sweet. However, the use of vanilla extract and vanilla powder (fundamentally inferior to pure extracted seeds) means the vanilla is more a warming modifier of this ice-cream’s creaminess than a distinctive flavour. Indeed, the ice-cream has a slight caramel edge.
7/10
Aldi, Specially Selected Madagascan vanilla ice-cream, 480ml, £1.99
Soft-scoop at its edges after standing for a few minutes (possibly indicative of how much air is in it), this, in its bright-yellow colour and sweet, anodyne flavours, is much closer to Wall’s. It tastes primarily of sugar and egg yolks, and, insomuch as it is flavoured beyond that (vanilla extract and muscovado sugar), it is curiously reminiscent of butterscotch Angel Delight. It gets a bit sickly after a while and, despite its smoothness and thickness, feels airily insubstantial in the mouth.
5/10
Marks & Spencer, Madagascan vanilla ice-cream, 500ml, £4
This is one of only two ice-creams in this test to use (ever-so-slightly gritty) vanilla seeds as a flavouring – and the difference is significant. Vanilla is present here in a genuinely warm, fragrant way (rich, buttery, suggestions of soft, tropical fruits at its edges). The similarly pronounced clotted-cream flavour may split opinion, but there is no denying that this is a lustrously thick, luxuriously creamy ice-cream – the most sophisticated in this field. Labelling it a “dessert menu” product seems prescriptive, though. We’ve all eaten ice-cream for breakfast, right?
8.5/10
Tesco, Finest Madagascan vanilla ice-cream, 500ml, £3
“Crushed vanilla pods” may give an ice-cream deceptive speckles that look like an abundance of vanilla seeds (as well as a less attractive light-brown hue), but their flavour lags – even, as this example illustrates, when aided by vanilla extract. The vanilla here is a murky, foggy presence without definition; a low, pervasive grumble, like Lee Marvin mumbling in your ear. This is another vanilla ice-cream that above its double-cream density is most notable for its caramel, demerara sugar flavours. It is more intense all-round than bog-standard vanilla, but no startling revelation.
6.5/10
Co-op, Truly Irresistible vanilla ice-cream, 500ml, £3.50
Whereas some luxury ice-creams are fudgily dense, this amalgam of milk and clotted cream is as silky as it is thick. However, it is also very sweet, which, allied with all that cream, produces an almost cloying mouthful – one that the vanilla (extract and ground pods) fails to offset. In fact, rather than being a complex, alluring component, the vanilla here is used more as a blunt seasoning agent, to intensify the sugar, eggs and cream and produce something that brings to mind a plateful of custard tarts.
6.5/10
Ocado, Ice Cream Union victory vanilla, 500ml, £4.99
A conundrum, this. The Ice Cream Union talks a good game – “no extracts, no essences, just hand-scraped Madagascan vanilla pods” – but, despite the laudable use of solely vanilla seeds as flavouring, the vanilla remains a floating, diaphanous background element in this ice-cream’s profile. Primarily, it tastes of sugar and egg yolks, and, despite its apparent thickness on the spoon, it has a curiously lightweight mouthfeel. This is sweet ’n’ cold like the ice-creams of old. At £5 a pot, you would expect a far greater complexity of flavour.
4/10
Asda, Really creamy vanilla ice-cream, 900ml, £2
Ultimately, there is no such thing as truly bad ice-cream. Even the most basic combination of, in this case, partially reconstituted skimmed milk concentrate, glucose syrup, coconut oil and ground vanilla pods is, at some level, enjoyable. This Carte D’Or-aping offering from Asda (curved container, scrolled finish on top), has a fluffy, woolly, aerated, slightly claggy, soft-serve texture. The vanilla tastes sweet and cheap, and it lacks enigmatic depth. Gradually, it becomes a bit nauseating, but you keep eating because, well, it is ice-cream.
3/10
