Where do you draw the line? Somewhere between novelty and nausea? The same day I heard about smoked salmon flavored vodka, I read about Humphry Slocombe.

Page after page in the New York Times Magazine was devoted to burning the envelope on novelty flavors. Once upon a time novelty was synonymous with toys. The novelty shop was a place where a certain innocent joy came in contact with irresistible gimcrack. The novelty shop of the mind of Jake Godby is a laboratory where hipster humor comes in contact with "too strange to consider."

In the commercial ice cream trade the term novelty has been around for a while with frozen desserts like: Drumsticks, ChocoTaco (both Philly inventions by Jack and Jill, inc.) or the less complicated Klondike bar. Now, I haven’t tasted any of the flavors of ice cream at the San Francisco parlour perversely named for two characters from the British sit-com, Are You Being Served — Mr. Humphries and Mrs. Slocombe. And I can’t say that I might not be intrigued. But “novelty” doesn’t exactly capture the spirit in which he creates. Would a cone of prosciutto ice cream or peanut butter curry entice you? Perhaps some Jesus Juice (red wine and coke sorbet) or a foie gras ice cream sandwich is to your taste. If not, try Fetal Kitten. There are less outrageous frozen combinations, but don’t expect to get a dip of strawberry, pistachio or vanilla bean.

I get the jokes. Red wine and coke; wine connoisseurs love the blind-fold test of seeing if the taster can distinguish between a run of the mill French red and flat coca cola. Peanut Butter curry, for me, would recall the instant hors d’ouvre of long ago: PB, mango chutney, a sprinkle of Madras curry on a Triscuit®.

I’m no Henry Ford. I won’t tell you, "sure you can have any flavor you want as long as it is vanilla!" After all, didn’t Baskin-Robbins make a reputation touting of 31 flavors. It is not the number; it’s the selections.

Mr. Godby claims he burned out repeatedly turning out crème brûlée and warm chocolate cake as a pastry chef for Coi and having worked at Boulevard and Zuni (all fine SF dining spots); his credentials are solid.

And weird ice cream is not exactly new. Fat Duck’s molecular gastronomist chef/owner Heston Bumenthal famously invented his signature Crab ice cream over a decade ago. Alarmed diners only began to get comfortable with it when he renamed it frozen crab bisque. The two words — ice cream — carry a semiotic message and Golden Beet Saffron confounds the meaning.

The taste for the big chill began some five-thousand years ago when the Chinese drizzled shaved ice with fruit juice or honey. Energetic entrepreneurs shipped bowls of mountain snow that they sweetened and sold in valley towns.

Tales of this frigid oriental specialty eventually reached Alexander the Great. The Emperor, ever alert for something new, introduced flavored ices to the Macedonians in the fourth century before Christ. Roman Emperors in their turn employed slave runners to transport snow or ice over which they poured honey, fruit pulp, and inevitably, cream. Nero was a big fan. Frozen desserts soon progressed from granitas (rough flavored ices) to sorbets (more finely grained), to what today is called semi freddo (semi-frozen dairy delight).

When in 1533, Caterina de Medici wed France’s Henry II, she brought with her the delight of ices, together with many taken for granted culinary advances. By 1559, Italians debuted ice cream when the happy combination of ice and salt was found to produce temperatures low enough for freezing an eggy-custard into tangible joy. As with most food fads in days gone by, the enjoyment of frozen desserts was restricted to the upper classes. But as all good things must, in time, trickle down to the masses — so did ice cream.

It was an enterprising Sicilian, Francesco Procopio, who sold the first frozen treats in Paris. In 1670, he opened Café Procope on rue des Fossés-Saint Germain serving creme glacées, sorbets and Italian pastries. It was a huge success.

Ice cream beguiled King Charles I of England, who reigned from 1625-1649, and paid his chef an annual bonus to keep secret the recipe for this new frozen delight. On the long list of menu items, in 1671, at the Feast of St. George in Windsor Castle, was “one plate of ice cream.” By 1718, however, the secret was well out when a recipe for ice cream first appeared in a cookery book called, Mrs. Mary Eales’s Receipts.

The first frosty mention of ice cream in America occurred in 1744 when the Governor Blandon of Maryland served it as a banquet finale. Revolutionary statesman and America’s first gourmet, Thomas Jefferson, was serving ice cream in the White House as early as 1802 and is credited with the invention of the omelet encased ice cream eventually known as Baked Alaska. First Lady, Dolly Madison, served ice cream at her husband James’ Presidential Inaugural in 1813, helping to make it a national pastime. The enormous popularity of ice cream in America gave rise to the misconception that it was a phenomenon of American origin when it was “re-introduced” to England and the continent.

City of the nation’s birth, Philadelphia, also became known for the nation’s best ice cream. Louis Dubois Bassett started making ice cream in 1861 and began selling it at the Reading Terminal market when it opened in 1885. For a long time they made traditional flavors. In 1959 they went wild and produced fifty tubs of borscht sherbet for Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. When they came out with a seasonal pumpkin spice ice cream, it was an eye-opener. Bassett’s’ latest flavor is Guatemalan Ripple — Guatemalan-sourced coffee with mocha fudge ripple, dotted with mini coffee-filled chocolates. Superb, but hardly off-the-wall. And that is just what ice cream should be.

Ice cream is about childhood; even when it is about adult indulgence. Ice cream was the first “reward” food. It is, and only should be, about pleasure; not an intellectual exercise. Even when packed with nuts or cookie dough, or flecked with bits of candy, swirled with fudge, peanut butter or marshmallow, dusted with malt, blanketed with chocolate syrup, topped with a cherry, no matter how far one is driven into decadence it is still about fun. Not foie gras. That’s for grown-ups. O, where are the snow cones of yester-year?

Thomas Jefferson’s Vanilla Ice Cream (original)

2 bottles of good cream 6 yolks of eggs 1/2 lb sugar Mix the yolks & sugar. Put the cream on a fire in a casserole, first putting in a stick of Vanilla. When near boiling take it off & pour it gently into the mixture of eggs & sugar, stir it well. Put it on the fire again stirring it thoroughly with a spoon to prevent it's sticking to the casserole. When near boiling take it off and strain it thro' a towel put it in the Sabotiere (freezer, ed.). Then set it in ice an hour before it is to be served. Put into the ice a handful of salt. Put salt on the coverlid of the Sabotiere & cover the whole with ice. Leave it still half a quarter of an hour. Then turn the Sabotiere in the ice 10 minutes. Open it to loosen with a spatula the ice from the inner sides of the Sabotiere. Shut it & replace it in the ice. Open it from time to time to detach the ice from the sides when well taken (prise) stir it well with the Spatula. Put it in moulds, jostling it well down on the knee. Then put the mould into the same bucket of ice. Leave it there to the moment of serving it. To withdraw it, immerse the mould in warm water, turning it well till it will come out & turn it into a plate. This original recipe is found in the Jefferson Papers Collection at the Library of Congress.

Edward Bottone, a food and lifestyle journalist, is Chef/Instructor in the Culinary Arts program at Drexel University and has been a radio talk show host and TV presenter, and is also a food stylist and photographer.

Article photos from Yahoo Shine, recipe photos from Kitchen Confit, Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan, Fashion Tribes, and aplysia_08 via Flickr (Creative Commons), "The Cantankerous Cook" photograph from Hulton Archive/Getty Images, "Plate" photograph from FoodCollection/Getty Images.