In 1994, the Japanese Patent Office granted Sato Shigeaki a patent for sardine-flavored ice cream.
, Shigeaki explained that his intention was to to promote the fishing industry by encouraging children who don't like fish to eat them. He also provided the basic recipe for his sardine ice cream. It involved cooking the sardines with onions, soybeans, rice wine, and walnut paste. Then adding this concoction to a base of chocolate ice cream.
This patent enjoys a somewhat unusual distinction. In 1997, European patent examiner Bernard Delporte revealed that it was the most common search request received by his office. He added, "No one believes that it actually exists until they've called it up and seen it themselves."
However, further research reveals that sardine ice cream was just the tip of the iceberg of Sato Shigeaki's grand vision. Apparently he imagined using oddball ice cream flavors to boost a broad range of different industries. As seen by the other patents he was granted:
Patent JPH08275731A: White Cedar Ice Cream
PURPOSE: To enable sales of an ice cream in different types of industries such as the lumber industry and the paper-manufacturing industry, to promote activation of enterprises and to sell the ice cream as a prescribed commodity as a local product by combining white ceder as a tree with ice cream to develop an epoch-making food.
CONSTITUTION: This ice cream is obtained by mixing a naturally extracted edible white ceder spice with an ice cream, mixing a pie dough with an edible white ceder spice, baking the mixture to give a pie, grinding the pie and mixing the flour with an ice cream or combining these ice creams with a designed cake forming a leaf or a twig of white ceder.
JPH06233656A: Sunflower Ice Cream
PURPOSE: To obtain an ice cream of sunflower as a local product.
CONSTITUTION: An ice cream base comprising honey of sunflower is mixed with a sunflower paste prepared by making seeds of sunflower into a paste to give an ice cream. The ice cream is topped with a material obtained by mixing seeds of sunflower roasted by an oven with caramel to give the objective ice cream of sunflower.
JPH11137180A: Salmon Ice Cream
PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To obtain salmon-contg. ice cream by mixing salmon in ice cream, and to provide a method for producing the above dessert, intended to offer a new commodity using salmon in the districts noted therefor and accomplished by proposing a technology to lower the freezing temperature of salmon and a second technology to remove the fishy smell inherent in salmon.
SOLUTION: This salmon-contg. ice cream is obtained by mixing salmon flesh boiled with alcohol during ice cream production process followed by chilling (freezing) the resultant mixture.
JPH06217700A: Chinese noodle seasoned with miso ice cream
PURPOSE: To provide a tasty ice cream-based Chinese noodle seasoned with miso intended to activate the relevant market as well as furnish consumers with joyfulness.
CONSTITUTION: Raw noodles are boiled with cow milk and then put into chilled cow milk and cooled. The resultant cooled noodles are boiled with a liquor comprising 80wt.% alcohol, 10wt.% miso and 10wt.% pig bone soup and infiltrated with the alcohol followed by cooling again. The resultant noodles are mixed with an ice cream base which has been separately prepared by incorporating an ice cream base with miso, followed by chilling, thus obtaining the objective ice cream-based Chinese noodles seasoned with miso.
JPH06217699A: Chinese noodle seasoned with soy ice cream
PURPOSE: To provide a tasty ice cream based Chinese noodle seasoned with soy intended to activate the relevant market as well as furnish consumers with joyfulness.
CONSTITUTION: Raw noodles are boiled with cow milk and then put into chilled cow milk and cooled. The resultant cooled noodles are boiled with a liquor comprising 80wt.% alcohol, 5wt.% of soy and 15wt.% seasoned shark fin soup and infiltrated with the alcohol followed by cooling again. The resultant noodles are mixed with an ice cream base which has been separately prepared by incorporating an ice cream base with a seasoned shark fin soup, followed by chilling, thus obtaining the objective ice cream-based Chinese noodles seasoned with soy.
JPH0998722A: Silk ice cream
PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To produce silk-contained ice cream perceivable by tongue and eyes that the ice cream contains silk by mixing silk, which is good for health, into ice cream and the unbaked dough of pie, and further spraying silk powder over the baked pie to lay it on the ice cream.
SOLUTION: Silk powder is added and mixed into ice cream base commercial or originally blended which has been sterilized by heating and cooled. Pie dough is also compounded with silk powder, and it is formed into a shape of a silk worm or a cocoon and baked. The pie is placed on ice cream. Silk powder is sprayed over the pie. This enables one to clearly perceive that the pie has silk and to directly taste the silk powder.
JPH08277399A: Cypress flavor for food
PURPOSE: To obtain a cypress flavor for food, having excellent deliciousness, taste and palatability and useful for the preparation of a cake, etc., by adding water to cypress wood chips, heating the chips to distill out a liquid component and removing the water from the liquid by evaporation.
CONSTITUTION: This cypress flavor is produced by adding water to cypress wood chips preferably mixed with false arborvitae wood chips, heating the chips to distill out a liquid component and removing water from the liquid by evaporation.
JPH06233655A: Beer ice cream
PURPOSE: To obtain an ice cream of beer taste having a mellowness and pleasantness to the palate.
CONSTITUTION: The alcohol degree of beer is weakened and mixed with a fresh cream, whole powder milk and a stabilizer so as to prevent the beer from becoming a sherbet state and blended with an ice cream base to give a beer ice.
JPH06343397A: Japanese rice wine ice cream
PURPOSE: To obtain a tasty ice cream having the taste of Japanese rice wine.
CONSTITUTION: The ice cream is obtained by adding SAKE (Japanese rice wine) lees to an ice cream base composed of sugar, cow's milk, an egg, fresh cream, skim milk powder, glucose and a stabilizer and cooling the resultant mixture.