Drinks advice

Vanilla ice cream with Lustau Pedro Ximenez

In the coupe there are scoops of vanilla ice cream made from a custard with egg yolk, cream and a real vanilla pod. Over it you pour a tablespoon of Pedro Ximenez, which sinks into the cold ice cream like a dark syrup of raisin and fig.

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Vanilla ice cream with warm cherries
Photo: D Christian Harrison, CC BY-SA 2.0

From the shelf

The bottle

Lustau is based in Jerez de la Frontera and bottles this Pedro Ximenez from one hundred percent Pedro Ximenez grapes. After the harvest those grapes are laid out to dry in the vineyard, the asoleo, which turns them into raisins and concentrates their sugar; the Consejo Regulador sets more than 212 grams of residual sugar per litre for this style. Fermentation is stopped with wine spirit and the wine then matures exclusively oxidatively, at Lustau for twelve years in Jerez. The bottle is at 17 percent alcohol, within the 15 to 22 percent the Consejo names for this style, and comes to us in 70 centilitres.

Lustau Pedro Ximenez

The combination

Why this works together

Vanilla ice cream and Pedro Ximenez work because they have the same structure from different sides. The ice cream is rich and cold and almost neutral in taste; the wine is syrupy and sweet with notes of raisin, fig and roasted coffee. What the combination then does is that the cold thins out the syrupy quality of the wine and the fat of the cream absorbs the alcohol, so that nothing sharp is left of the 17 percent. The vanilla ice cream also brings no acidity or bitterness of its own to fight with the sweetness; Green and colleagues found in 2010 that sweetness strongly suppresses the other basic tastes and itself hardly yields, and in this combination the sweetness therefore has nothing to suppress. The only thing you need to watch is the quantity: one tablespoon per scoop is enough, beyond that the ice cream turns into a sauce. The Consejo Regulador explicitly names cream ice cream as a pairing for Pedro Ximenez.

At the table

The dish

  • For 4 people
  • Ready in 40 minutes, plus cooling, churning and freezing
  • Type dessert

What you need

  • 1 firm vanilla pod
  • 300 ml whole milk
  • 300 ml whipping cream
  • 100 g fine caster sugar
  • 4 egg yolks
  • 4 tablespoons Pedro Ximenez, to pour over the ice cream

How to make it

  1. Put a container with a lid in the freezer. Cut the vanilla pod open lengthwise and scrape out the seeds.
  2. Put the seeds, the stick, the milk and the cream in a pan. Bring it to the boil, take the pan off the heat and leave it to stand for at least twenty minutes.
  3. Whisk the egg yolks with the sugar for a few minutes until pale and fluffy.
  4. Reheat the vanilla mixture to just below boiling point and pour it through a sieve onto the yolks while whisking.
  5. Pour everything back into the pan and let it thicken over the lowest heat for about ten minutes. Keep stirring. Then strain the custard into a bowl standing in ice water and let it cool completely.
  6. Churn the cold custard in an ice cream machine until it is scoopable, put the ice cream in the pre-chilled tub and place it in the freezer. When serving, pour a tablespoon of Pedro Ximenez over each portion.

In the glass

Serving

Serve this Pedro Ximenez between 12 and 14 degrees, the temperature the Consejo Regulador specifies for this style; Lustau itself says 10 to 12 degrees, so slightly cooler is fine too. Use a white wine glass or a catavinos of about 200 millilitres and pour only a little, because a small glass of this wine lasts a long time. Once opened, it keeps for about two months, with the bottle closed and stored cool.

Everything about Lustau Pedro XimenezBack to Drinks advice from ’t Bockje

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