We’ve written extensively on pairing wine with desserts, from apple tart and chocolate cake to cheesecake and tiramisu. There’s a brief mention of two sweet wines that go with ice cream: Nigori saké, a sweet, milky style, and Pedro Ximénez* dessert sherry.

But the problem with those limited ice cream and wine pairings is that ice cream comes in many flavors, and you wouldn’t pair the same wine with chocolate ice cream as with strawberry.

So since then, we’ve devoted lots of time to pairing wines with ice cream. The recommendations are below, and also include pairings with sorbets.
 
 
ICE CREAM & DESSERT WINE: A NEW CONCEPT

How alien is the concept of wine and ice cream? So much so that we couldn’t find a photo of a dish of ice cream together with a glass of wine “for love or money,” as the expression goes. The closest we got was a bowl of rum raisin ice cream, over which Pedro Ximénez sherry had been poured as a sauce.

It is widely thought that ice cream and wine just don’t mix. One reason given is that the butterfat from the cream dulls the palate, but foie gras is even fattier and sweet wines are splendid with it. The other reason is that the coldness of ice cream numbs the palate, and this can be true.

However, if you wait at least 10 seconds to sip the wine, following a spoonful of ice cream, your palate can be “primed” for wine. Use sorbet instead of ice cream and avoid the butterfat issue altogether.
 
The Tradition Of Sweet Wine For Dessert

Sweet wines date to ancient times. The finest wines in Rome were sweet white wines. Bonus: The higher the sugar content, the more a wine can withstand aging, temperature shifts and transportation; so sweet wines held up better.

Also, then as now, sweet wines pair with any course, depending on the particular dish. Today, wine connoisseurs pay big bucks to attend dinners where different vintages of Chateau d’Yquem, the priciest sweet wine (it’s a Sauternes from the Bordeaux region of France), is poured with every course.
 
The Tradition Of Sweet Wine For Dessert

For centuries at refined dining tables in Europe, dessert consisted of a glass of sweet wine, alone or with fresh fruit. A glass of Port with cheese is another time-honored tradition. Wherever a sweet wine is made, you can bet that it is enjoyed at the end of dinner.

We respect that tradition: A glass of Sauternes with sweet summer apricots or peaches is divine; ditto with Port and Stilton or other blue cheese. Over time, we’ve switched our guest menus away from serving a substantial dessert after a big meal (including a cheese course), to a dish of sorbet and a glass of dessert wine.

More recently, we’ve been inviting friends to an “ice cream social”† to try different wine and ice cream pairings. It’s a delightful occasion, and we highly recommend it. Consider it for adult birthday parties.
 
 
HOW TO PAIR WINE WITH ICE CREAM & SORBET

While we’ve paired specific sweet wines with specific ice cream flavors, below, you first need to seek out what your local wine stores stock. Explain the specific ice cream flavors you’d like to serve and see what they recommend from their inventory. You can bring them this list, to make the selection process easier.

France’s vintners produce a wealth of sweet wines:

 
Dessert wines from other countries include:

 
 
WINE & ICE CREAM PAIRINGS

[1] Ice cream made with Pinot Noir, which can be drunk alongside it. Here’s the recipe from Desserts With Benefits (photo © Desserts With Benefits).

[2] Kitchen Repertoire adds an extra dimension to a classic dish of vanilla ice cream with Pedro Ximénez sweet sherry: black sea salt. Leave the chocolate syrup to the kids (photo © Kitchen Repertoire).

[3] Pedro Ximénez also goes well with chocolate, be it chocolate ice cream, chocolate cake, chocolate mousse, or a fine chocolate bar (photo © Bodegas José De La Cuesta Pedro | Spain).

Nigori saké is unfiltered, creating a cloudy, or milky, appearance. The style is brewed to be sweet and the texture is creamy. We love to pair it with dessert. Snow Maiden, in the photo, is one of the finest (photo © Kinjo Kitchen + Cocktails | Facebook).

[5] Banyuls, a sweet red wine from France, is a perfect pairing with chocolate ice cream and other desserts (photo © M. Chapoutier).

 
 
HOW TO SERVE WINE & ICE CREAM

 
 
WHAT ABOUT PAIRING WINE WITH SORBET?

You can use the same wines and liqueurs as with the analogous ice cream flavors; or with a sweet sparkling white wine.

For citrus sorbets (grapefruit, lemon, lime, orange—not represented in the ice cream list), pair with the sparkling wine or the matching liqueur.
 
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*Pedro Ximénez, pronounced him-AY-nez and also spelled Jiménez and various other ways, is a white Spanish wine grape used to make fortified wines like sherry. It’s also the name of the sweet dessert sherry made from it. Pedro Ximénez is often abbreviated as PX. The identity of the original Pedro Ximénez and his relationship to the grape is lost to time.

†Ice cream socials—parties where people came to eat ice cream— were popular events in the U,S. They date back to the 19th century before freezers, not to mention electric ice cream makers (i.e., they were a laborious undertaking, and thus a real treat). Some churches and communities still give them, but today it’s an easy party to throw at home. Here’s how to have an ice cream social.

‡AOC, an abbreviation for appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC), “controlled designation of origin,” is an official designation that assures that a product was produced in the specified region according with specific ingredients, according to traditional techniques. The analogous word in Italian is denominazione di origine controllata abbreviated, DOC.

‡‡Puttonyos is the Hungarian word to denote the level of sugar in wine; the comparable word used in the U.S., France and other countries is brix.

Winter fruit salad colors were a mix of pink grapefruit, oranges and pineapple, green and red grapes. There were splashes of white from diced apples and pears.

When summer arrived, with vividly colored fruits galore, Mom switched from the winter lineup to what she called “Kaleidoscope Fruit Salad,” after the device we played with as kids (if you’ve never seen one, here’s an online kaleidoscope).

So today’s tip is: Make a Kaleidoscope Fruit Salad. Or if you prefer:

 
Or, turn the fruit salad into:

You can get much more colorful than this: Add blueberries and/or blackberries, for starters. Photo courtesy McCormick.

 
You can do the same with a multicolored vegetable salad.

RECIPE: BLUEBERRY DIP FOR FRESH FRUIT

This recipe, from the Highbush Blueberry Council, produces the most beautiful heliotrope-colored dip (a medium purple).

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. PLACE 2 cups of the blueberries, the cream cheese and the preserves in the container of a food processor or blender. Whirl until smooth.

2. TRANSFER to a serving bowl; cover and refrigerate until serving.

 
Go forth and make edible kaleidoscopes and rainbows.
 
*The “summer fruits” list also includes fruits that are available year-round. If a peel of a different color is left on the fruit, we’ve double-counted it in both color groups (e.g., green apples with white flesh).
  

Even if something must ultimately end up in a landfill, it’s surprising how many different items destined for the garbage can be re-purposed at least once.

We were feasting upon a mammoth plateau de mer* at a local bistro, wondering if we should ask to take the empty lobster and shrimp shells home to make stock. Then it struck us: If the larger scallop shells have long been used to serve Coquilles St. Jacques and other foods, we could find uses for the cast-off oyster shells. The solution was easy: Use them as replacements for appetizer spoons (also called amuse-bouche spoons or tasting spoons, and a popular way to serve at cocktail bites).

You can wash and refill the oyster shells ad infinitum; you can use scores of them at parties; and if you collect too many, you can give sets to your friends.

As we munched our way through the platter of seafood, we thought of the visual fun of using those half-shells to serve something other than oysters. Here’s our preliminary list, especially appropriate since today, August 5th, is National Oyster Day:

What would you serve in an oyster shell—besides oysters, of course?James Beard Foundation. This dish was created by chef Kyle Koenig of Topping Rose House in Bridgehampton, New York.

 
*French for “plate of seafood,” a plateau de mer, or plateau de fruits de mer, is a seafood appetizer that consists of raw mollusks (clam, oyster, periwinkle, scallop) and cooked shellfish (crab, lobster, prawn, shrimp). The seafood is served cold on a platter, on a bed of ice. At restaurants, depending on the size ordered, the platter can be two or three tiers high and plated in silver for a grand presentation.

We traveled the Web to see how others were using empty oyster shells. Here’s what we found:

 
If you have other ideas, let us know!