Photos by Stan Lim, UCR
Walking through rows of citrus groves on a sunny April morning, University of California Riverside (UCR) Dining Services employees picked fruit off trees and loaded it into the bed of a truck.
A little more than a month later, fresh ice cream made from that citrus was being served in Scoops Ice Cream Shop at UCR. The citrus came from UCR’s Givaudan Citrus Variety Collection. It was the latest batch of custom flavors that the university’s Dining Services created in partnership with Coney Island Creamery.
The first UCR ice cream flavors were debuted in September with the opening of Scoops. The UCR signature flavors are also being packaged and sold in four-ounce cups at UCR’s Scotty’s Convenience Stores under the Citrus Gifts label.
The ice cream is the latest partnership between Dining Services and researchers to create unique products based on UCR’s agricultural research, including a gift line and citrus beer.
“It’s super fun. The best part of our job is connecting the campus to students, staff and faculty,” said Kurt Duffner, director of retail and restaurants for Dining Services. “There’s no better way to do that than food.”
Dining Services staff and the ice cream makers at Coney Island showed how they produce those flavors, which began with the trip to the Citrus Variety Collection.
Tracy Kahn, curator of the Givaudan Citrus Variety Collection, guided them around, cutting up different varieties for them to taste as she described each fruit’s flavor. Boukhobza, a blood orange strain, and Ortanique, an orange and tangerine hybrid, are both UCR-developed citrus varieties. “We picked them because they have a really good flavor,” Kahn said.
he group included chefs from the culinary team, managers from retail, and directors like Duffner, enjoying the opportunity to be outside and help choose the best fruit for new ice cream flavors.
The group ended up picking 140 pounds of Boukhobza, 70 pounds of Orantique and 30 pounds of Meyer lemons. The fruit was taken to the Glasgow Residential Restaurant on campus where dining staff juiced the oranges, creating marmalades, syrup and curd. A few weeks later, those ingredients were delivered to the Coney Island office where managing owner Sandra Saragih and two production assistants made 50 3-gallon tubs of ice cream over two days. The first day they created the Ortanique chocolate followed by Boukhobza vanilla the next morning.
Duffner said Dining Services is looking forward to picking more fruit in late fall to winter, which is prime citrus season.
Dining Services has served the Citrus Gift ice cream cups at several campus events. “The response has been great,” Duffner said.
Source: UCR
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