Hello, My Name Is Ice Cream

The flavor of pumpkin is deep and earthy, which can also be said of sage, and the marriage makes a wonderful flavor for ice cream. Canned pumpkin or almost any hard orange-fleshed squash can stand in for the pumpkin in this recipe; the texture will be the same.

If the flavor of sage doesn’t tickle your fancy, swap the sage leaves for 10g | 2 teaspoons of pumpkin pie spice, cooked over the stovetop with the brown sugar and pumpkin.

Prepare the pumpkin. Place the pumpkin puree, brown sugar, and salt in a small saucepan over medium heat. Cook, stirring frequently, until the pumpkin begins to simmer and the brown sugar is dissolved. Transfer the mixture to a heatproof container and place it in the refrigerator.

Prepare an ice bath. Fill a large bowl two-thirds of the way with very icy ice water and place it in the refrigerator.

Boil the dairy and sugars, and infuse the sage. Put the cream, milk, glucose, and granulated sugar Numeral 1

in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium-high heat. Cook, whisking, until the mixture comes to a full boil, then remove from heat. Stir in the sage and leave to infuse for 30 minutes.

Strain and reheat the milk. Pour the dairy through a fine-mesh strainer, discarding the sage. Place the dairy in a clean pot over medium-high heat until the liquid comes to a full boil Numeral 4

; remove from the heat.

Temper the yolks and cook the custard. In a medium bowl, whisk the yolks. Add ½ cup of the hot dairy mixture to the yolks while whisking. Pour the tempered yolks back into the pot while whisking. Place the pot over medium-low heat and cook, scraping the bottom of the pot constantly with a rubber spatula to avoid curdling.

Chill. When you notice the custard thickening, or the temperature reaches 180°F, immediately pour it into a shallow metal or glass bowl Numeral 3

. Nest the hot bowl into the ice bath, stirring occasionally until it cools down.

Strain and mix in the pumpkin. When the custard is cool to the touch (50°F or below) Numeral 2

, strain it through a fine-mesh sieve to remove any bits of egg yolk. (This step is optional, but will help ensure the smoothest ice cream possible.) Whisk in the pumpkin.

Cure. Transfer the cooled custard to the refrigerator to cure for 4 hours, or preferably overnight. (This step is also optional, but the texture will be much improved.)

Churn. Place the base into the bowl of an ice cream maker and churn according to the manufacturer’s instructions. The ice cream is ready when it thickens into the texture of soft-serve ice cream and holds its shape, typically 20 to 30 minutes.

Harden. To freeze your custard ice cream in the American hard-pack style, immediately transfer it to a container with an airtight lid. Press plastic wrap directly on the surface of the ice cream to prevent ice crystals from forming, cover, and store it in your freezer until it hardens completely, between 4 and 12 hours. Or, feel free to enjoy your ice cream immediately; the texture will be similar to soft-serve.

Best texture Commercial stabilizer 3g | 1 teaspoon mixed with the granulated sugar before it is added to the dairy.

Least icy Guar or xanthan gum 1g | ¼ teaspoon whirled in a blender with the custard base after it is chilled in the ice bath.

Easiest to use Tapioca starch 5g | 2 teaspoons mixed with 20g | 2 tablespoons of cold milk, whisked into the custard base after it is finished cooking.

Most accessible Cornstarch 10g | 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon, mixed with 20g | 2 tablespoons of cold milk, whisked into the simmering sage-flavored dairy, then cooked for 1 minute.

Brooks Headley owns a burger joint, but don’t let that fool you: he’s an amazing pastry chef. He’s got a reputation for being punk rock, possibly from his longstanding career as a drummer in punk rock bands. I have to be honest: I don’t really know what being punk means. I came of age in Seattle in the ’90s, and we had a different kind of angst. If I listen to stereotypes, being punk means, “F*** the man, we do whatever we want, anarchy for everyone!” Which sounds pretty aggressive, and anti-everything. But if I base punk on what I know of Brooks, I would think it means, “Super-nice, talented vegetarians with fierce independent streaks who always wear black hoodies.” But then again, what do I know about being punk?

If you go to Brooks’s burger joint, you’ll notice that he makes burgers without any meat, which is a slap in the face to the entire beefy genre. Brooks does something equally punk rock with his ice cream. When making custard ice creams, the ice cream establishment firmly requires you to cook the egg yolks until they thicken into a custard. Brooks doesn’t do that. Instead, he lets his ice cream base cool, then blends in raw egg yolks, breaking every rule about making custard ice creams. It shouldn’t work, and Brooks admitted he’s not sure why it does, but folks, these anti-establishment ice creams are outright delicious.

When his book Fancy Desserts came out, my cooks immediately started cooking from it. Their first question was “Why does he add raw egg yolks to his gelatos?” I had no idea. I’d never seen anyone do that before. So I asked him. He told us that he likes how the egg yolk adds richness but no cooked flavor. He compared it to that luscious yolkiness on eggs Benedict, where the yolk is warm but basically raw, and freaking delicious.

Unlike a cooked custard, these yolks don’t thicken the ice cream base, but they do work as an emulsifier. The egg yolk contains lecithin, which is amphiphilic, meaning it loves to hold on to both water and fat at the same time, thus helping everything stick together in the ice cream base, the same way raw egg yolk binds mayonnaise. The lecithin contains triglycerides, which destabilize the surface of the fat globules, and help prepare the butterfat to trap air in the ice cream when it’s churned.

I asked Brooks if I could share his technique with the readers of this book, because I wanted to give those of us who don’t want to risk curdling the eggs while cooking our custard bases another option. More so, I want the world to know about his unique approach. You can apply this technique to any of the custard recipes in this book. Simply hold on to the egg yolks and chill the ice cream base after the sugar and dairy are cooked together. Once they are cold, whisk in the raw egg yolks.

The only drawback to Brooks’s raw custard is that the eggs never get to the temperature at which germs like salmonella die. This means all of Brooks’s raw egg ice creams need to come with a warning label. It’s the same warning label that’s on sushi, eggs sunny side up, and beef tartare, which is that eating undercooked foods could be—on some small and unlikely level—hazardous to your health. But, I mean, an ice cream with a warning label? That’s pretty punk rock.