Arrack ice cream

Arrack: a fascinating flavour mostly found in exotic Swedish alcoholic beverages — or Swedish pastries. Now also in ice cream! Our ice cream, however, offers all that flavouring joy without any actual alcohol!

Arrack: a fascinating flavour mostly found in exotic Swedish alcoholic beverages — or Swedish pastries. Now also in ice cream!

Our ice cream, however, offers all that flavouring joy without any actual alcohol!

Arrack – a very old spirit … and a Swedish favourite!

Arrack is a strong liquor with a very, very long history, predating both whiskey, gin and vodka to just name a few. Originally from Indonesia and/or the West Indies, Arrack is traditionally distilled from rice, molasses and palm sap. In the 17th and 18th century, Java was a major sugar hub, and most so-called Batavian arrack also came from there.

Sweden’s love story with Arrack is believed to date back to that time, as trade via Holland and the Swedish East Indiamen began to bring ever-increasing numbers of oak barrels to our frozen North.

As the years went by, the Arrack provided the basis for the increasingly popular Swedish punsch, a sweet liquor that eventually become something of a national culinary treasure, beloved in particular by students and (!) soldiers.

While not as immensely popular today as during its historical heydays when there was an abundance of different brands, Swedish punsch still retains a strong position as a Swedish classic.

How to make our ice cream

Yes, instead of arrack alcohol, we will be using a much more readily available (and arguably healthier …) alternative: arrack essence. Not only is essence cheaper and easier to get hold of – it is also well suited for ice cream: the added amount of liquid is very limited and unlike alcohol, the essence won’t particularly affect the freezing-process

For the base you can choose between any favourite recipes you may have (French or Italian custard-based, no-cooking philadelphia-style, Sicilian gelato …). Since the essence only adds a couple of tablespoons to any base mix, most recipes will work well as they are, without need for any adaptations!

Myself, I decided to opt for an eggless base with more milk than cream. To get that to work, I this time opted for adding a small amount of the versatile Tara gum: a rather natural and very powerful stabiliser derived from the Peruvian Tara tree.

Making the ice cream is easy: just mix the milk and the cream in a sauce pan, put on the heat and stir in the sugar/tara gum/vanilla mix.

Bring the ice cream base close to the so-called Nappe stage: since we aren’t using any eggs that need to be pasteurised and since Tara gum doesn’t need to heat more than this in order to work its stabilising food-chemistry magic, it is sufficient to go up to about 80º C /176º F.