Cabernet-flavored 'CU in the City' is not an ice cream to wine about

Vincent Nykiel, general manager of the Cornell Dairy, prepares a sample of the ice cream "CU in the City" in front of the Cornell Dairy's ice cream-making machine. Susan S. Lang

By Susan S. Lang

CU in the City, a vanilla ice cream with cabernet caramel swirl and soft, rich fudge chunks, licked its competition in this year's ice cream-making contest in Cornell's Food Science 101 class. But the only places in the world where this wine-flavored ice cream will be available are on campus and at the Cornell Club in New York City.

The ice cream is the result of an assignment to develop an ice cream flavor that strengthens or celebrates the connection between the Cornell campus in Ithaca and the Cornell Club, said Joseph Hotchkiss, professor and chair of food science at Cornell, who has been teaching students how to create complicated foods, like ice cream, since 1995.

To develop their flavor, the CU in the City team called the Cornell Club to ask about their top menu items and learned that cabernet ranked high on the list.

"We found that their most popular beverage was a cabernet wine, and someone had the crazy -- yet brilliant -- idea of trying to incorporate a cabernet swirl into our ice cream," said Casey Benton, a junior from Guilderland, N.Y.

"It combined the sophistication of New York City and the wine valley around Ithaca," added Marie McKiernan, a senior from Warwick, N.Y.

One of the taste judges was Brenda Werner, a research support microbiologist. "The wine was a novel ingredient that provides not only a unique and pleasing taste sensation but also an additional fragrance component that most ice cream formulations lack," said Werner.

The Cornell Dairy, which produces about 18,000 gallons of ice cream a year, will create CU in the City and sell it for at least a year, but only on Cornell property, said Vincent Nykiel, general manager of the Cornell Dairy and pilot plant.

In three teams of about 20 students each, the class researched ice cream flavor names, formulas, butterfat content, proportions and potential market for the product, as well as learned the technical aspects of commercial food processing to make a new ice cream, such as how much milk-fat content would be acceptable to the discriminating palate, how much overrun (the air content) to put into it and how much particulate (crunchy tidbits) to use.

To produce the wine caramel swirl, the team reduced cabernet sauvignon, cooled it, added it to the caramel and then added chunks of fudge.

"Balancing the flavors of vanilla, cabernet, caramel and chocolate fudge was challenging," said McKiernan. "We wanted the flavors to complement each other without overpowering any single ingredient."

Other members of the winning team include Casey Benton, Emily Breidbart, Sara Cohen, Michelle Colban, Melissa Costa, Krystal Dehaney, Mallory Delehanty, Laura Greisman, Laura Hill, Adelle Iusim, Ji Kim, Lauren Koller, Julia Langer, Rachel Miller, Ian Odell, Maurice Petroccione, Rachel Vigneaux, Erica Waichman and Benjamin Williams.