Sought: an unadulterated pleasure

Put good things together, and often you make something even better.

Where would the hurley be without the sliotar, the fish without the chips? So when it comes to two of the 'numero uno' sweet things in life, you'd think it'd be a no-brainer.

We all love ice cream, pretty well. Each of us in Ireland gorges on over 10 litres of it every year.Chocolate rates right up there among the crucial inventions of civilisation. Surely then, ice cream and choccy are natural partners in hedonistic crime?

Not on your nelly, according to industry experts. Good honest ordinary chocolate ice-cream seems to be a step too far for modern marketing. Yet, why? Even a contemporary hero such as Homer Simpson has encountered the frustration, as touchingly illustrated in the episode where he discards carton after carton of "tricolour" or Neapolitan ice cream because the strawberry and ice-cream stripes are untouched, but all the chocolate has been eaten.

Peter Caldwell, marketing director at Dale Farm, says his company makes Schuster's chocolate scoop ice cream, but they don't put plain chocolate ice cream on sticks or in tubs.

"It wouldn't be a good seller. We've done it before, but it hasn't stood the test of time."

You'll find concoctions such as banana chocolate, cookies and cream, fudge brownie, mint choc chip. Liz Finlay, senior brand manager at market leader HB, points to their Carte d'Or Triple Chocolate one-litre tubs. But will only a threesome do it?

Ultimately, it seems that when you add good things together, the sum isn't always equal to the parts. Think cherry and cola, think celebrities and golf, and for whatever reason, ice-cream and chocolate.