Eat your ice cream. Get your veggies.

 

 

 

 

A secret no more - Häagen-Dazs introduces veggies to ice cream in Japan.

 

 

 

     Now you eat your ice cream and have your veggies, too. As long as  you’re in Japan.

Häagen-Dazs is introducing two veggie-fruit combination ice creams in Japan. Tomato-Cherry and Carrot-Orange.

     Both tomatoes and carrots have a slightly sweet taste anyway (carrot cake, anyone?) and combining those vegetables with cherries or oranges is probably a good match. They’d certainly be fun to taste.

     The new line, called “Spoon-Vege,” also is lower in fat than other Häagen-Dazs ice creams. However, Tomato-Cherry and Carrot-Orange are only available in Japan, so it may be a while before most of us have a chance to lick them up.

     Veggie ice creams are admittedly not common. But they’re not new either. In the 18^th century a French cook named François Menon flavored his un-frozen cream desserts with celery, parsley, tarragon, chervil, fennel, and other herbs and vegetables. Before long, cooks were making ice creams with the same ingredients. They also liked ice creams flavored with flowers, including roses, violets, and orange flowers.

     Recipes for artichoke ice cream also date back to the 18th century. Like the Spoon-Vegge ice creams, they had the additional benefit of containing fruit for added sweetness and flavor. In one recipe, pistachios and candied orange peel are mixed into the ice cream along with the artichokes.

     A French confectioner of the era, M. Emy, made ice cream with truffles. Not the chocolate ones. The ones that come from beneath the ground and cost the earth.

     Auguste Escoffier, the famed 19^th century French chef, was one of many who blended asparagus into ice cream and molded it into the shape of stalks of asparagus.

     The French weren’t the only ones to add veggies to their ice cream. Back in 1778, an Italian confectioner, Vincenzo Corrado, wrote that there was no vegetable a good confectioner couldn’t turn into an ice cream. Even today, some seem determined to prove him right.

     I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before somebody comes up with ice cream made with kale.