High-Tech Ice Cream

Most of us who make homemade ice cream do it the old-fashioned way. Hand-cranked freezers are getting rare, and so are the electrified versions that spared the physical labor but kept the salt and ice. These days I make my homemade ice cream in a Krups machine that uses a plastic dasher inside a prefrozen metal bowl. (Tonight's variety: homemade fresh cherry sherbet with a touch of almond extract.) It holds only 3 pints, but that's plenty for several days for the four of us. And I can experiment with flavorings, sugar levels (all the recipes are too sweet), creaminess, yogurt, and various fruits.

But that is positively primitive compared to this technique. Who but a chemist would make ice cream with liquid nitrogen?