In 2009, I froze some goat’s cheese. It was only a small log of rosary ash, but it was expensive and I was going on holiday so I wrapped it in clingfilm and put it in the freezer. Obviously, I completely forgot about it. In fact it wasn’t until this week, when I was inexplicably holding a tub of stilton ice-cream, that I remembered I had put it there.
It turns out you can freeze anything. And I do. Butter, garlic, goat’s cheese. Cheese ice-cream makes sense – it’s dairy, after all. It’s also a little bit healthier – in savoury ice-cream, salt is used rather than sugar. Which helps if you are of the opinion that sugar is the antichrist.
Savoury ice-cream is an old concept, but it has never taken off. There may be good reasons for this. Why mess with a beautiful thing? Still, it’s had a few big moments. Just ask Heston Blumenthal, who got rich making egg-and-bacon ice-cream at The Fat Duck and then marmalade-on-toast ice-cream for Waitrose. Going back further, AB Marshall’s The Book of Ices, published in 1885, contained recipes for spinach and asparagus ice-creams.
Weird flavours may still be big in the molecular gastronomy scene, but seeing them in gelaterias is pretty novel. Savoury ice-cream is having a shot now because we’ve stopped viewing it as an alternative dessert and started to see it as something in its own right, a snack or starter; and because of the global spread of new flavours. Japanese teas are one of the bestselling bases at Ruby Violet in London, one of the UK’s swishest – and most inventive – ice-cream parlours.
I start my journey with a tub of stilton ice-cream, which comes studded with cranberries. The key, says Ruby Violet’s owner-manager Julie Fisher, is to treat stilton ice-cream like stilton. She likes to pair it with a water biscuit. Me, I prefer a few grapes. Nigel Slater does a goat’s cheese version with slices of charcuterie or spread on toast.
Stilton ice-cream tastes like stilton. It’s rich and piquant, but a bit too real. Horseradish makes much more sense. It’s sweet and light, the horseradish only biting through at the end. Julie says that smoked salmon is “a bit unpleasant”, funnily enough. Elsewhere, Twiglet flavour is better than it sounds, and sour cream is stellar. The key is an open mind, and a good palate cleanser in between tastes. Preferably a sorbet. Preferably not cheese-based.
I have no idea what frozen goat’s cheese tastes like – I moved out of that flat in 2014. But maybe someone found it and liked it. I live in hope.
