The Ice Cream Flavor That Might Have Used Whale Poop As An Ingredient

It's been said that ice cream began with China's Tang dynasty, when a confection of fermented yogurt was frozen with flour and camphor. Today, we regularly nosh on vanilla, Neapolitan, and even rocky road ice cream, but it turns out a rarer, forbidden flavor is out there — and, no, we aren't referring to byakuya, the world's most expensive ice cream, which is flavored with truffles and gold flakes.

In the 1660s, English noblewoman Lady Anne Fanshawe transcribed a recipe for "icy cream" that may just be the earlier ancestor of the treat we enjoy today. It contained familiar ingredients, like heavy cream and sugar. Fanshawe's icy cream was flavored with orange flower water or ambergris, which is a peculiar, expensive, and very hard-to-source ingredient today ... and, when many people find out where it comes from, they might just refuse to try it. 

Ambergris is a hard chunk of waxy material with an earthy scent and taste that comes from the intestines of sperm whales. It's believed that ambergris forms inside whales because the indigestible beaks of the squid they eat get lodged inside and form a solid buildup with bile or fecal matter. There is some controversy, however, over precisely how ambergris exits sperm whales: do they vomit it up, or does it come out the other end? Yes, you are reading that right ... old-fashioned ice cream might just have been flavored with whale poop, albeit whale poop that has been tossed about by the waves and hardened by the sun into a sort of stone. Makes you think twice about turning your nose up at the viral olive oil ice cream, doesn't it?

If you are able to contain your disgust at the thought of ingesting feces — even good-smelling, good-tasting feces that may or may not actually come from a whale's back end — you still may not be able to try ambergris. In the United States, the Marine Mammal Protection Act bars citizens from possessing ambergris, let alone eating it. This is to safeguard sperm whales, which are endangered due to overaggressive whaling in the 19th and 20th centuries that sought to harvest the valuable spermaceti oil that gives sperm whales their name. If you can even track down essence of ambergris from an overseas supplier, it will be costly. In 2013, a food historian sourced it at $25 per gram, and that was 12 years ago.

If you can't get your hands on ambergris, you may just have to settle for other written descriptions of its smell and taste, which tend to note its unique mix of floral and woodsy elements, reminding some of forest odors like fallen leaves and mushrooms. Ambergris occasionally has a moment as the flavor du jour in American fine dining, where those who have imbibed it as a beverage additive describe it as reminiscent of stagnant water or the smell of old books. Sounds like good taste is in the mouth of the beholder when it comes to this rare ingredient.