Victorians Used To Eat Ice Cream Made From This Leafy Green

We live in the age of such culinary oddities as mustard-flavored donuts and charcoal latte art. So you'd think modern chefs would run away with the crown for history's weirdest ice cream experiments, what with flavors like lobster, black pepper, and even bone marrow popping up on menus. As it turns out, the Victorians were already well ahead of the curve. Long before molecular gastronomy and viral TikTok recipes, they were churning out ice creams that were just as curious, and sometimes downright bizarre — like spinach ice cream!

Now, being an extremely versatile green, spinach can play the hero in a wide variety of recipes. From a buttery saag on your dinner plate to a handful blitzed into your morning smoothie, it's a leafy overachiever that fits into everything from salads to spanakopita. It's been creamed, sauteed, baked into pies, and stuffed into pastries. But frozen into ice cream? That's not a leap most of us would think to take.

Unless, of course, you were a Victorian — and more specifically, Agnes Bertha Marshall. A culinary celebrity of her time, Marshall was a pioneer of frozen desserts in the late 1800s, known for her elaborate ice creams. In her cookbook "Fancy Ices", she offers a recipe for spinach ice cream that reads like a curious mix of custard and garden greens: boiled spinach puree folded into a sweetened egg custard, passed through a tammy cloth, frozen, and finished with a generous swirl of whipped cream.

Spinach is just one of many odd flavors that pop up in Victorian-era recipe books. Marshall's book also includes a recipe for cucumber ice cream, while oysters, asparagus, and Parmesan all found their way into frozen form. Fast forward a century, and ice cream is no longer confined to the dessert menu. Chef Heston Blumenthal's bacon-and-egg ice cream made headlines at The Fat Duck, while L'Abeille in New York was churning out spot prawns paired with tomato ice cream and beef tartare alongside a celery root and mustard scoop. These savory scoops and experimental toppings may never rival vanilla on America's favorites list, but the fascination clearly endures. So what is it about the strange and frozen that keeps us coming back for more?

Whether it's enhancing the main course or reimagining what dessert can be, savory ice cream refuses to stay in its lane — and that's exactly the point. First, there's the thrill of the unexpected: a cold, peppery scoop where your taste buds expect sweetness, or a hint of onion ice cream hiding beneath foie gras. Part of the fun also lies in how ice cream behaves on the plate, its cold, creamy texture softening bold or rich ingredients. Also, unlike static sauces or purees, savory ice cream creates a dish that evolves as it melts.

In the end, savory ice cream isn't just about flavor, but about surprise, transformation, and a little bit of showmanship. Something the Victorians understood long before we gave it a modern twist.