Living: An Eternal Verity

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My favorite flavor is certainly ginger.

It's a great specialty of the mandarin restaurants in San Francisco and Beverly Hills. In my most recent food classes, we have made lots of ginger, but also peach, mango, coffee and vanilla. I'm always very happy with a fine vanilla. It should be a custard or a French ice cream.

The main thing is the ingredients.

Good eggs, good cream and good fruit, preferably fresh fruit. If fresh fruit is not available, a little Grand Marnier helps.

As for brand names, I don't know one from another.

Even the best ingredients don't guarantee success. I once had a dinner party for eight people, none of whom had ever been to my house. All of them were well known, most in the food field. I had done a very special ice cream as part of a dessert. But my housekeeper, who has been with me for years, neglected to get it frozen. When it was finally frozen and served, it was a gallon of large lumps. It was like soup. Do not serve soup for dessert.

By Craig Claiborne, food writer for the New York Times

When I was a child in Mississippi, Sunday was my favorite day of all, particularly in summer and most especially when fresh peaches were at the peak of their season. My mother would make a vanilla base—a simple English custard, really—into which she would blend those peaches with their melting sweet flesh, and she would pour this into the container of a hand-cranked freezer. My father would take the ice pick and chip away at a huge block of ice, more than enough to fill the space surrounding the metal cylinder containing the custard, adding alternate layers of rock salt. And all of us would take turns at rotating the handle up to an hour or longer. When the turning became labored and more difficult, the magic moment had arrived. The lid of the canister was removed along with the double layer of wax paper beneath it (this to act as a guard against rock salt crystals) and, heavenly day, what an irresistible rush for silver spoons to dip into that white-tinted-with-pink confection. The lucky one got to lick the wondrous creamy leftovers that were still clinging to the mixer.

I have never lost my enthusiasm for ice cream, of almost any flavor. I have never been an icebox raider, except for one irreversible craving. Ice cream. Or sherbets. Or a fantastic ice, what the French call granites and the Italians call granita. There's nothing to give succor to the palate like the frozen purity of a seasonal berry or fruit juice made semisolid.

I learned about ices fairly late in life, while dining some years ago at the Taillevent, one of my favorite restaurants in all Paris. At the end of a meal that had included an incredible Roquefort cheese souffle, roast caneton au citron, Anna potatoes, salad with assorted cheeses and an apple tart, there was nothing more to be desired. Until the assorted ices were displayed. I had them all—raspberry, lemon, grapefruit and pear. It gave added luster and significance to the champagne that accompanied it and instilled a craving for assorted ices that would last a lifetime.

By Chris Chase, author of The Great American Waistline

Growing up, I thought that the rest of my family had queer tastes in ice cream. Rum raisin. Maple walnut.