FLAVOR LOG // 024

Behind the Flavor: Raspberry Italian Ice

 

We originally called this one Raspberry Sorbet.

The idea started with the artist formerly known as Prince, RIP. More specifically, with a lyric from Raspberry Beret. We wanted to paraphrase the lyric and add our twist:

Raspberry sorbet, the kind you find in a grocery store. 

It was a pretty good, and equally important, fun, name. 

Then we tasted it.

During the tasting, someone said it reminded them of Italian ice.

Once they said it, everyone knew exactly what they meant. It wasn't necessarily that the flavor was fundamentally different from raspberry sorbet. It was the association. Italian ice also made so much more sense for the Ice Cream Truck season. Suddenly Raspberry Italian Ice was the new name.

But the flavor itself had another problem. It was almost too believable.

Raspberry and coffee work surprisingly well together. Something we've learned over the years is berry flavors generally have a natural complementary relationship with coffee. Citrus is a different story. We have an amazing lemon coffee that we'll get to in a later season, but citrus doesn't always play as nicely with coffee as berries do.

Put lemon and raspberry together though, and something happens.

Tea.

The combination was so recognizable that drinking the coffee hot could make you think of raspberry lemon tea before you thought about coffee. We tried to get away from it. We pushed the raspberry forward, pulled the lemon back, then reversed the balance. But the particular lemon note that made it taste like Italian ice or sorbet had to stay. Swap it for a fresher lemon or a lemon-rind note, and we lost the icy-treat character we were trying to capture. We kept adjusting the balance, but every road led back to the same place.

It didn't matter. Every road led back to the same place. 

Eventually, we stopped trying to make it something it wasn't.

If the flavor wanted to be an incredibly convincing raspberry lemon experience, then that's what we were going to make. We leaned into it and made the best representation of that flavor combination we could.

The tradeoff was that some of the earthy character you normally look for in coffee comes through less. But the flavor itself is remarkably true to what we're trying to evoke.

That's an interesting problem to have when you're making flavored coffee.

The process in making exceptional flavored coffee isn't only about getting the right flavors to show up. It's also deciding how much you're willing to let them take over.

For Raspberry Italian Ice, we decided to let 'er rip.

Raspberry Sorbet became Raspberry Italian Ice. The Prince reference stayed in the origin story but the flavor got its own identity.

 

The Development Notes

Raspberry works naturally with coffee, while the combination of raspberry and lemon can create a flavor profile strongly associated with tea. During development, changing the balance between the two flavors consistently produced the same result, so we chose to preserve the most convincing expression of raspberry lemon rather than force more coffee character into the cup.

 

MISSION STATUS: Flavor Forward 
Flavors Released: 13 / 52
Ice Cream Truck Season 2: 6 of 9 weeks
Mondays Missed: 0
World Record Status: On Track