Häagen-Dazs · Desserts
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Strawberry gives up more to freezing than any other fruit in the aisle, and it's the flavour that suffers first. Its flavour lives in volatile compounds that fade in the cold, and its structure is mostly water, which turns to ice and leaves the pieces mealy once they thaw. That's why the dairy does so much of the work. Fat carries the volatiles that would otherwise disappear and the sweetness fills in what the fruit gives up, so a strawberry ice cream can end up tasting more of strawberry than frozen strawberries do. The name is doing real work at the plain end of the range. Strawberries and cream is a specific thing in Britain with a fixed set of associations attached, and an ice cream carrying it gets measured against those instead of against other strawberry tubs.
