Morozhenoe

Soviet ice cream, morozhenoe, was produced to strict GOST state standards that mandated a minimum of 10 to 12 percent milk fat and 15 percent sugar, with no vegetable fat substitutes. The result was a dense, creamy, intensely dairy ice cream that Russians of the Soviet generation remember as the best they have ever eaten. Sold in paper cups at street kiosks for a few kopecks, it was the universal childhood treat. After the Soviet collapse, cheaper imported ice creams with palm oil and less dairy flooded the market, and the GOST standard was abandoned. Since the 2010s, Russian producers have revived the GOST recipe, and the dense, eggy, high-fat style is back in supermarkets under the label 'GOST ice cream'. The homemade version uses cream, milk, egg yolks and sugar, cooked into a custard before churning.

Dense, smooth, intensely creamy and dairy-rich, with a warm egg-yolk roundness, more filling than modern ice creams. Each spoonful is heavy, smooth and deeply satisfying.

The technique is a cooked egg-custard base, churned. Egg yolks (about 5 per litre of cream-milk mixture) are beaten with sugar, then tempered with hot cream and milk, cooked to a custard that coats the back of a spoon (about 80 degrees C), cooled, and churned in an ice cream machine. The high yolk ratio gives the dense, custardy texture and the warm, round flavour that distinguishes Soviet-style ice cream. The butterfat, from the heavy cream (about 30 to 35 percent fat), gives the density and the slow melt. The custard must be cooked gently to avoid scrambling the yolks. Churned at about -5 degrees C, then hardened in the freezer for at least 4 hours.