In Anne Fadiman’s latest book of essays, At Large and At Small, she writes about her brother and his obsession with ice cream.

> Although Kim works as a mountaineering guide, leads kayak expeditions, plays jazz recorder, teaches courses on snow morphology and the aerodynamics of bird flight, takes nature photographs, and manages a small investment fund, I think of him primarily as Wyoming’s Emperor of Ice Cream.

Like most ice cream freaks, Kim Fadiman is perturbed by overrun, the extra air beaten into ice cream to give it a lighter texture (if we’re being charitable) or to sell air for the price of ice cream (if we’re not). Unlike most ice cream freaks, Fadiman doesn’t just complain; he does something about it.

> Kim likes to reduce the overrun of Breyers Coffee, which he rates excellent in flavor but excessively fluffy in texture, by placing a few scoops in a plastic bag and smashing them with a meat-tenderizing mallet. (“How often do you do this?” I asked. “Always!” he answered. “Why eat all that air when it’s so easy to get it out?”)

I imagine the siblings having this conversation with raised voices, wearing those construction-site ear protectors, while Kim bashes away at a bag of ice cream.

Naturally I had to spend some of the R&G research budget on coffee ice cream. The pounding regime really works, although the end result is no better than Haagen-Dazs.