Britain has long had a love affair with Asian food, from our introduction to Chinese and Indian takeaways and home cooking during the twentieth century to our more recent appreciation of Filipino, Korean and Taiwanese cooking. Our hunger for new flavours – and the ease of finding recipes and restaurants with just a quick scroll – has also encouraged us to make sure we’re getting it right; instead of simply sticking to what’s mainstream, we’re increasingly seeking out authentic, regional options from micro-cultures around the continent. And though plenty of that has revolved around all things savoury, we’ve also been looking to Asia for inspiration when it comes to the sweeter side of things, ice cream in particular. Whether it’s a flurry of exciting new parlours – most notably Florence Mae Maglanoc’s Mamasons Dirty Ice Cream – or more adventurous specials on menus, flavours like matcha, black sesame, yuzu and miso are popping up everywhere, both in restaurants and supermarket freezers, mixing citrusy, spiced and savoury notes with the sweet and creamy scoops we love.

One of the brands leading the charge is Yee Kwan, which has a simple mission: to introduce authentic East Asian flavours into our ice creams, sorbets and desserts. In 2006, founder Yee Kwan and husband Anthony embarked on a year-long honeymoon around Australasia, immersing themselves in bustling local markets and restaurants and wondering how they could bring those flavours back to the UK. When they returned home, Yee Kwan began to develop a range of East Asian-inspired ice cream flavours, which were unveiled to the world four years later in 2010. Almost fifteen years on, their flavours – which range from lychee to toasted coconut and red Thai tea to Vietnamese coffee – are found in over 500 Pan Asian restaurants across the UK and Europe, including Iné by Taku, Shoryu Ramen, Wheelcake Island, Giggling Squid, Glasgow’s Bing Soul and many more. They’re also stocked in their own online shop, as well as the likes of London’s Japan Centre and Japanese food hall Ichiba.

Yee Kwan only uses artisanal, small batch equipment, which means there’s less overrun (or air), creating a creamier, smoother finished product. The same focus on quality is applied to their ingredients – British milk and cream go into their ice creams and real fruit purées into their sorbets, while the likes of organic matcha powder from Japan and brown sugar syrup from Taiwan only dial up the flavour. Here, we’ve focused on just a few of Yee Kwan’s key ice cream flavours.

A broad term, milk tea refers to drinks made with, unsurprisingly, tea and milk, such as chai, some Taiwanese bubble teas and iced Thai tea. The recipes usually begin with a black tea base, before milk, sugar and other ingredients such as fruit are added. Yee Kwan’s Hong Kong milk tea flavour is made using black tea and a creamy, evaporated milk, giving it a rich milky flavour with a delicate aroma.

If you’re not a convert already, you’ll no doubt have spotted matcha tea popping up in lattes and smoothies over the last few years. A type of green tea grown predominantly in Japan, matcha is earthy and slightly bitter, and vibrant green in colour. It has become enormously popular in recent years thanks to its perceived health benefits, namely its high levels of antioxidants, and today is used in everything from meat marinades to patisserie – you can see our matcha recipe collection above. When it’s added to ice cream, its distinctive vegetal notes find a brilliant balance with the sweet and creamy flavour (the combination is so delicious that Yee Kwan’s matcha flavour scooped a Great Taste Award).

Root vegetable taro is a staple in many cultures around the world, including Asia, where it’s eaten in both sweet and savoury dishes, including taro buns, bubble tea, taro cake, taro rice, wu gok (taro dumplings) and taiyaki. It has a light purple hue and is hugely versatile, with a nutty, earthy flavour and slight sweetness. Its appearance means it often draws comparisons with ube, and while the two are similar, taro is generally less sweet. Yee Kwan’s taro ice cream is one of its bubble tea-inspired flavours and contains real taro root, with its natural sweetness lending itself perfectly to ice cream.

Miso has well and truly found its place in the mainstream, with pots of the Japanese fermented bean paste now available in most supermarkets and on hand in restaurant kitchens. We know it’s fantastic weaved into glazes, soups and stir-fries, but it’s also no stranger to desserts (try Dan Kenny’s chocolate miso pot), its saltiness and umami-rich nature providing an excellent counterpoint to sweeter flavours (in a similar way to salted caramel, which has also become an ice cream classic in the last decade). Miso adds a wonderful depth of flavour in Yee Kwan’s Great Taste Award-winning ice cream, particularly when paired with the sweet, slight bitterness of chocolate.

Black sesame seeds take their colour from their hulls, which also provide more texture and make them slightly more bitter and earthy than other kinds. They are widely used to garnish dishes, roasted and made into pastes and seasonings and turned into oils. In its ice cream, Yee Kwan says its black sesame (another Great Taste winner) adds smoky and moreish toasted notes to the creamy dessert.

While classic ice cream flavours will always have a place in our hearts, there’s a world of ingredients to explore and brilliant new combinations to discover, as Yee Kwan shows.