Caviar, baked beans, and the weird ice cream toppings you really should try

YoIt's 30 degrees outside and the sun is shining. You open the freezer and take out a tub of baked bean ice cream. The best way to cool down.

Not fancy? How about a scoop of salted caramel sprinkled with Stilton cheese and accompanied by a glass of port? A walnut and caviar ice cream?

Welcome to the ice cream renaissance, where the weirder the flavor, the better. Gone are the days when ice cream toppings involved a simple choice: strawberry or chocolate sauce. Maybe some colorful sprinkles if you were feeling particularly daring. But even the most timeless indulgences need to evolve. Videos of people gleefully dousing their soft serve with everything from crispy bacon to hot sauce have gone viral.

At the forefront of this trend is pop star and food revolutionist Dua Lipa. In a January interview with Radio 1, she praised the benefits of adding olive oil and sea salt to vanilla ice cream. “A lot of people have tried it and they’ve all gone over to the dark side,” she said. TikTok had a field day.

Me? I was born on the dark side. Nothing appeals to me less after finishing a perfectly salty meal than a bowl of something gooey, gooey, and gooey. But ice cream and, say, blue cheese? Those are two of my favorite things. I know, I know: It sounds gross. But there’s something wonderfully mystifying to the palate about a dessert that mixes wildly incongruous flavors and textures. Plus, sweet and salty is already an accepted winning combination. Obviously, we love that with our popcorn. Whip up some ice cream and is it really that different?

In fact, olive oil and ice cream have been a mainstay in the olive-growing regions of Italy and Spain for centuries. And they're a perfect pair: the earthy, fruity bitterness of the oil contrasts with the creaminess of the ice cream, and the texture of the oil thickens pleasantly against the cold, enhancing the mouthfeel of each bite.

But innovation is not limited to olive oil. I can't stop thinking about the frozen Tunworth cheese, with a consistency similar to ice cream, that I had at L'Enclume, Simon Rogan's three-star restaurant in Cumbria, last year. “Put cheese in ice cream and everyone loves it,” chef Charlie Taylor told me recently. “The salty and unusual flavours in ice cream are great because they allow an alternative way of presenting flavours through different temperatures.”

open image in gallery

While I might be one of the few people who thinks, “This ice cream could do with some cheese,” the combination is by no means unpopular. At Lancashire’s two-Michelin-starred Moor Hall, chef Mark Birchall serves a sweet cicely ice cream with strawberries and ragstone, a soft goat’s cheese. “The complexity of the cheese works well with the fruit, acidity and nutty flavours as the cheese develops,” Birchall tells me.

Both L'Enclume and Moor Hall serve their ice creams as palate cleansers rather than desserts. This isn't a gimmick either. The word “dessert” didn't even exist until the 17th century; before that, they were known as Appetizersor dishes that are served between courses that can be sweet or savory. That said, anyone from any century would surely question caviar on ice cream. That's a bit much, isn't it?

At the two-starred Kitchen Table restaurant in Fitzrovia, James Knappett puts fish roe on walnut ice cream. One bite is like that moment when Ratatouille When Remy realizes that strawberries and cheese are a match made in heaven. “Caviar works well in desserts for the same reason people often pair miso or sea salt with sweet things: it adds a real hit of umami and creates a more complex flavor,” says Knappet. Trust me: It’s delicious. I’m going to recreate it at home.

It’s clear that the boundaries of what constitutes dessert have been redefined, for better or worse. Not everyone will like the chorizo ​​ice cream with dark chocolate mousse, sherry caramel and crumble at Portuguese restaurant Joia in Battersea, for example, although I thought it was wonderful. It’s clear that they’re catering to savoury apologists like me. “Chorizo ​​ice cream works well if you have other elements on the plate to balance it out,” says concept chef Henrique Sá Pessoa. “It’s not a dish that everyone is going to like, but people who are more intrigued by an adventurous combination love it.”

You'd probably have to be pretty adventurous to try Branston Piccalilli, the aforementioned baked bean- or soy sauce-flavoured ice cream. That's what's on offer at The Ice Cream Project by Anya Hindmarch, a full-time designer and part-time taste bud terrorist, which is returning to Belgravia for its third year. You can even take part in a blind tasting, because who doesn't want a bit of trauma with their ice cream? Oh, and there's oyster-flavoured ice cream at Wilson's, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Bristol. Kind of like a bivalve-flavoured cherry on top.

From Michelin-starred kitchens to celebrity cravings, one thing is clear: ice cream, that much-loved childhood treat, has grown up. And the popularity of all its weird and wonderful toppings – whether olive oil, Stilton cheese, baked beans or oysters – serves as a reminder that the simplest ingredients often yield the deepest flavours. Or, at least, a very good story to tell.