Clean and bright or cloying and musky? Horse milk ice-cream taste test

Does the thought of tucking into an ice-cream made from horse milk leave a sour taste in your mouth? Ignore the neigh-sayers: some experts believe an equine gelato can be both tasty and healthier than the traditional cow variety.

Food scientists from the West Pomeranian University of Technology in Szczecin, Poland, have managed to make a batch of equine gelato that scores well on consistency and appearance. They say it has a number of potential health benefits, including containing half the fat of ice-cream made with cow’s milk. Their study also found it was high in phospholipids, which can help tackle stomach complaints; certain fatty acids that ease breathing problems; and lactoferrin, which boosts the immune system.

But is it tasty? Finding out proved to be a challenge. Apart from dairy technologists in a lab in Poland, no one makes horse-milk ice-cream and no samples were available. The lead researcher, Katarzyna Szkolnicka, did supply a recipe but the main ingredient is hard to come by.

First you need to find a horse, and then milk it. Fortunately, Frank Shellard, a farmer in Combe Hay, Somerset, offered to help.

He invited the Guardian to milking time at Cromwell Farm – Britain’s only horse dairy . Shellard, 66, is an advocate for the healing powers of horse milk and has written a book on the subject. He reckons that drinking a glass a day has helped to cut his cholesterol levels by half in the months after a mini stroke.

The scientific evidence for such benefits is far from conclusive. But Shellard latches on to recent studies, including the latest one from Poland, that point to the therapeutic potential of mare’s milk. “The evidence is starting to come in that it’s good for your health,” he said.

Shellard’s customers are already persuaded. He supplies more than 80 regulars who are willing to part with £6.50 for 250ml of the stuff . “They might have a skin or a gut problem and have read online that mare’s milk can help. The other day, a lady said ‘your milk is quite expensive’. I told her ‘it’s very expensive, but it’s the best milk in the world’,” he said.

Today, Shellard is milking Mocha, a Percheron-cross draft horse and one of 15 mares on the 35-hectare (86-acre) farm. She placidly munches grass pellets as Shellard attaches suckers from an adapted cow-milking machine.

Mocha provides about two and a half pints (1.5 litres) at each milking session, and she can be milked up to four times a day. But currently the rest of her milk is reserved for her eight-week-old foal, Enzo.

The milk is pasteurised and frozen before being dispatched to customers. Shellard keeps some fresh in the fridge for sampling. It tastes surprisingly sugary and light compared to regular milk, with a pleasant horsey hint to the flavour. “It’s naturally sweet; it’s almost chestnutty,” Shellard said.

He could not be persuaded to make any horse milk ice-cream. “We’re milk producers, not ice-cream makers,” he said. He suggested a few local producers but they all politely declined, citing the busy summer season.

Kitty Travers , an ice-cream maker who has been praised as the “ice-cream queen”, was happy to give it a go. She said she would need 10 pints of mare’s milk delivered to her “ice-cream shed” – a converted greengrocer in south London.

Shellard gave the Guardian 24 bottles of frozen horse milk and after a three-hour journey involving a ride in Shellard’s pickup truck, a train trip, and a cycle across London, Travers received the milk.

Travers’s book, La Grotta Ices , offers dozens of experimental recipes, including quince custard scoops and a damson and grappa choc-ice. She also regularly makes ice-cream from ewe’s milk, but never horse milk, until now.

Poring over the Polish recipe, Travers pointed out that technically it was a yoghurt ice-cream, as half the milk had to be fermented first, so it might take longer. When the Guardian returned on Wednesday for the tasting, Travers was so disappointed with the end result she was reluctant to be photographed with it.

She said the yoghurt tasted “clean and bright”, adding that mare’s milk was used to make yoghurt drinks in Kazakhstan, but for her the ice-cream didn’t work. “I just hated – it’s thin and slightly gritty and sweet in a weird way,” she said. “I didn’t have high hopes for it because it is so low in fat. You have to use a lot of trickery to make a low-fat product into an ice-cream. And I don’t like using trickery.”

She said flavouring it with a chestnut puree might help disguise the musky flavour of the milk. “You would never make something like that in restaurant. It has to be delicious in itself.

“If I had to use horse milk, I’d make it into yoghurt, really strain out the whey and then I’d just whiz it up with thick honey to give it more body, and do nothing else.”

Travers was convinced her children wouldn’t like it either, but admitted later that her 10-year-old daughter had loved it, describing it as vanilla and coconut.

“Horses for courses,” Travers joked. “Maybe I’m fussy, but I think there’s a reason why we just don’t make horse-milk ice-cream.”

The taste test

When I was invited to sample the ice-cream, expectations were low. First there was the ick factor: the idea of licking a horse-milk ice-cream cornet made me pull a face. But it curled out of the tub like proper ice-cream and was pearly white in colour.

Once I put the prejudice aside, I imagined it would be underwhelming. Without any flavouring, the fear was it might taste a bit dull – blander even than vanilla. Like a Mini Milk lolly, perhaps, but more earnest. Or an ice-cream for grownups with flavours too subtle to detect.

Related: How to make frozen yoghurt – recipe | Felicity Cloake’s Masterclass

Such squeamishness and pessimism turned out to be way off the mark. Travers was being harsh about the flavour. It tasted interesting. There was a horsey muskiness that seemed quirky at first, but it was true that it didn’t linger well. It might fare better in some flavoured variety – Red Rum and raisin, perhaps?

The lightness did make a refreshing contrast to some traditional ice-cream, which can be a bit stodgy. And for all the potential health benefits of the main ingredient, it did not taste piously wholesome. If anything, it was too sugary, the sweetness too cloying.

And it was a bit frosty, like the dregs of a tub that has been left in the freezer for too long. Afterwards, it was a relief to be offered a normal ice-cream. It was a truly delicious apricot flavour and helped get the taste of horse out of my mouth. The cow won.