Frankincense ice cream adds to flavour of Khareef Festival
An American living in Oman has created an ice cream made from frankincense, and says it all happened by accident
MUSCAT: If you’re planning to visit Salalah for this season’s Khareef (monsoon) Festival, do sample some of Trygve Harris’ frankincense ice cream.
This unique confection was devised by Harris—an American who’s been living in Salalah since 2006—and she came across the recipe almost by accident.
“In 2011, I was playing around with some roses and jasmine. Es- sential oils can be used in flavouring, usually, and I was experimenting,” recalled Harris, the owner of Enfleurage Inc. a New York-based company, which sells herbal oils and aromatics from across the world.
“It was a friend, actually, who told me about her grandmother’s ice cream-in-a-blender recipe and we tried it with frankincense,” she told the Times of Oman.
“It was strange, but very good, in a completely unexpected way. Frankincense has a lot of herbal, pine-like green notes, with a little orange spice, and this goes really well in a rich dairy bed.
“The cooling pine and mint notes are perfectly balanced in the cold creaminess.”
Once she’d made her ice cream, she decided to introduce her unusual creation to the public.
“I just gave away tastes, little spoonfuls to people at the Hafah Souk, for Khareef 2011,” recalled Harris.
“I’d grab people passing and offer a spoonful of ice cream. Most people were too surprised to say no. But I only needed to do that for a couple of days. My capacity was about 110 servings a day so within a week, it was selling.”
“It was so well received that I got inspired and started making different flavours,” she added.
“I took an ice cream course in Pennsylvania, United States, and then finally did a full course in gelato in Bologna, Italy. But the ice cream is seasonal, and requires a lot of work, but my capacity is small. Most of the hotels who’d heard of this wanted gallons, and it’s just too much for me.”
While her store does sell frankincense ice cream, her base in Oman is also well-known for her body care products, essential oils, incense and other wellness products. Harris prides herself in sourcing only the best ingredients.
“Our raw material is all Omani, all our frankincense is from Dhofar,” she said. “It’s never easy to procure because I always want more information. I’d like to know which exact trees are harvested, and who exactly is doing the harvesting, and how much exactly is coming from those trees, but there is no way.”
“The trees grow in remote, inaccessible, and widely divergent places,” added Harris. “Our clients want to know as much as possible about the entire process. I taught myself about frankincense distillation. It’s quite different from lavender and rosemary and eucalyptus, but I felt it in my heart and happily, frankincense loved me back and the distillations were excellent.”
“It seemed logical that I would start a distillery in the place I loved so much.”
And how does Harris plan on growing her ice cream dream in future?
“Well, honestly, I’d love to have a Gelateria,” she revealed. “I also got to study chocolates for a week in Italy and there’s a really fun world out there. I’ve made hard candy and taffy with frankincense, but the gelato and chocolates were the most inspiring.”