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Ice-cream makers throw out the rule book

AP, PARIS
Sunday, Jul 23, 2006, Page 19

Nick Pappas scoops chocolate orgy ice cream at Lizzie's Homemade Ice Cream in Waltham, Massachusetts. Old favorites such as chocolate are making way for new flavors like roquefort ice cream. PHOTO: NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE

As the mercury soars in Europe’s summer heatwave, ice-cream sellers are expecting bumper sales. So how about a creamy mustard cornet? Or a refreshing lawn sorbet?

While most people still prefer tucking into traditional vanilla, chocolate or strawberry, some imaginative ice-cream makers are pushing the boundaries of their craft.

If companies such as Haagen Dazs took ice-cream out of the nursery and turned it into a naughty-but-nice treat for adults, this new wave of inventors is tickling taste buds with a whole range of surprising flavors.

Pole Sud, a small company based in southern Aude in the shadow of the snowy peaks of the eastern Pyrenees, now offers 1,200 flavors, many of which have been created at the request of some of the 7,000 chefs across France with whom they work.

“There has been a change in tastes and fashion,” said chef Ludovic Enee, from Zephyr restaurant, in Paris’ 20th arrondisement, who has dreamt up several of the flavors created by Pole Sud, which he offers to adventurous clients.

“Twenty years ago some of these flavors would have been seen as completely stupid. Today they don’t shock anyone.”

His menu offers a beetroot sorbet served with a slice of foie gras or a nut creme brulee dished up with a mouth-melting Roquefort ice cream.

He’s even dreamt up an espresso cafe and balsamic vinegar sorbet to accompany a wild bass dish, while he offers both savory or sweet ice-creams for desserts, with violet or red tea providing a hint of the exotic.

“I deliberately didn’t want to have vanilla on the menu,” said the 30-year-old chef, who has owned the brasserie for the past four years. “Instead I wanted to guide people towards something new.”

Didier Barral, managing director of Pole Sud, said the market for new, outlandish flavors has taken off in the past five to 10 years, as chefs and diners become more experimental.

“The difficulty in making ice-cream comes from reconciling paradoxes. Hot and cold, tender and crunchy. From taking the ingredients and retaining the intensity of their taste in a new form so that as a solid substance melts in your mouth you get the full flavor,” he said.

He admits he is passionate about ice-cream, although it doesn’t show on his waistline, and says only the very best ingredients can be used, whether it is parmesan for a crumbly, cheesy ice-cream, or grass for his sorbet.

“We did quite a bit of research and used only the best grass, which we cut, washed very carefully and then made an infusion from it to use in the sorbet,” Barral explained.

Modern chefs are going mad for his mixes, he says, with the company, which used to employ only four staff, having expanded to 150 with sales as far as Britain, Spain and Belgium as well as around France.

Among the most difficult to make was his oyster sorbet, while he never did manage to perfect a smoked cigar sorbet for one client.

Martine Lambert, based in the northwestern resort of Deauville, also insists on using only the best products which she handpicks herself at the huge wholesalers market based in Rungis, eastern Paris.

Vanilla remains her number one best-seller, made from the finest pods hand-selected from a grower in Madagascar.

“Ice-cream is something which lets people return to their childhood. They want something familiar they had as a child,” said Lambert, explaining the popularity of traditional flavors which still account for 30 percent of all her sales.

But she also experiments with surprising new flavors, offering a range of 50 from the small workshop she runs with just 12 staff such as grapefruit and ginger, pineapple with six spices and ceylon tea with crystallized bergamot peel.

“We listen to the customers and hear what they want. Spices are very fashionable at the moment for example.”

Like Pole Sud, her ice-creams contain only natural ingredients — no artificial colorings, preservatives or chemical additives.

“You just need good fruit and ingredients. There is no trickery involved. Fruits are a gift from nature, but they are very fragile,” she said.

Even Berthillon, the venerable Parisian home of three generations of ice-cream maker, has jazzed up its flavors.

US actress Jodie Foster, who reportedly always drops in for a beloved raspberry sorbet on her visits here, could also choose among such novelties as earl grey, or praline and pine nut ice-cream, or lemon and thyme sorbet.

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