CREAM OF THE CROP

You could have heard a pin drop. As Sarah Crooke tells the story, she and her husband, Stephen, were sitting in the classroom for the world’s leading ice cream course at Pennsylvania State University in the US, surrounded by food chemists. As the talk swirled around stabilisers, emulsifiers, food dyes and flavour powders, Sarah raised a tentative hand. “But what if,” she asked, “we used fresh raspberries?”

While everyone looked at her as though she’d announced she was planning on making ice cream with dish water, she certainly attracted the attention of the lecturer, who came to her after the class and shared whatever knowledge he had about