This makes the book worth checking out of the library, even if just to write down flavor ideas from the recipe names or make notes on flavor ingredient ratios. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but flavors are all well-balanced, and some of his more original ideas are worth borrowing or riffing on.
The recipes include gram measurements (thank you!), a sadly rare concession to serious cooking in this level of book. Lebovitz’s flavor combinations are interesting. The base formulas are all standard homemade ice cream fare, and as such probably won’t be interesting to readers of this blog.
This is a popular book, full of approachable beginner-level recipes for home ice cream makers. Aspiring pastry chefs will want a more solid reference for all of this. There’s a fair amount of content concerning standard pastry components (glazes, sauces, compotes, meringues, savarins, financiers), although it’s far from thorough, and the recipes themselves are not organized in a very user-friendly manner. I’d recommend this book as a supplement if you need an introduction to plated frozen desserts, with a scope beyond ice cream. Migoya is one of the best and most knowledgable pastry chefs in the world, but some of the basics here (like stabilizer formulas) are poor. I’m not convinced by some of the formulas in the book, and wonder if there’s some ghost writing and hurried editing at work here. Much more breadth than depth it covers a wide range of desserts beyond ice creams and sorbets, getting into granitas, semifredos, etc., and then into related components and plated desserts. Typical CIA text book-introductory level for beginning pastry chefs. While Corvitto’s focus is gelato, with all the ambiguities attached to that label, his book will be useful to professionals and enthusiasts regardless of their chosen style.įrozen Desserts, Francisco Migoya (Culinary Institute of America)
This kind of thinking should be standard, but is surprisingly rare even the world of professional ice cream making. He also introduces a simple method of compensating for flavor ingredients that increase hardness (chololates, nut pastes etc.). He makes thorough use of POD and PAC values (for mathematically estimating sweetness and hardness). His explanations are clear, and his formulas and analyses are laid out in a visually elegant manner, making everything easy to understand, modify, and scale. Compared with other professional ice cream book authors, I find that he does the best job of integrating the theoretical with the practical. Notable to anyone with more restricted ideas of what constitutes gelato, Corvitto includes both custard-based and non-custard-based formulas.Ĭorvitto’s introductory text on ingredients, theory, and technique is compact but very good. This constitutes a stylistic bent, but the fundamentals are the same as with any ice cream, giving his book a broad appeal. Corvito defines gelato as lower-fat ice creams, served at a relatively soft consistency. It’s bilingual, with the main text in Italian, and smaller-type English translations I find it’s a little slow finding my way around in English. This is an excellent textbook aimed at gelato production.
Most people will probably choose to leave this one at the library. Evans.Ī book with a scope much broader than ice cream, and a scientific focus much deeper than what you need to make ice cream, this book might nevertheless appeal to your inner geek if you’re trying to model a thermal process or understand the behavior of ice crystals. Worth a look if you find it at library.įrozen Food Science and Technology, Judith A. Same target audience as the Goff and Hartel book, but much more condensed, at 200 pages.
You can get a taste for free with the online version, The Ice Cream eBook, courtesy of the University of Guelph.Ĭhris Clarke. Considering the price and immensity, this one is worth finding at a library, but I wouldn’t recommend buying it. For artisanal ice cream, you’ll have to skim through dense chapters to find useful information. It’s also aimed solidly at industrial production. Nevertheless, it offers greater breadth than depth, which positions it primarily as an introductory text or technical reference. This book is the reference work that every process engineer at an ice cream factory has on her shelf, and is probably the fist expensive, toe-breaking text book required by every university ice cream science program. These are tailored to our typical readers: enthusiasts, pros, and aspiring pros who are familiar with the basics, and want more.ĭouglas Goff is possibly the most famous name in ice cream science, up there with Drs. To help save your valuable time and money and bookshelf real estate, we offer the following highly opinionated recommendations.
Buying too many ice cream books is one of the job hazards here at Underbelly.