The team behind Davisons' Manx ice cream has devised an entire Christmas menu of more than 30 festive flavours of ice cream and sorbet with something to suit everyone.

Iain Davison explained: 'It's Christmas, it's something different and something unusual — we do a lot of unusual flavours.'

The firm makes more than 50 other flavours of ice cream which each take 30 minutes to produce and Iain is open to suggestions when it comes to new varieties.

'We will make whatever the customer wants. We're willing to try anything once,' he said.

At the firm's factory in Mill Street, Peel, Iain served up lychee and ginger sorbet as a starter, followed by a main course of slices of turkey ice cream, large scoops of mash potato flavour, sprout flavour made to look like the vegetable, cranberry sorbet and sage and onion stuffing flavour with chocolate source used as a substitute for gravy, with Christmas pudding ice cream as a sweet.

'When you look at it on the plate you can tell it's a Christmas dinner,' Iain said proudly. 'We just decided because it's Christmas to do everything that's on a Christmas plate. The only one we haven't done is carrot and turnip.'

Four gallons of each flavour will be available from the ice cream parlour on Peel promenade and will be served up on cones or in sundae glasses rather than as a meal.

Iain said: 'People can come in and have a mashed potato and sage and onion ice cream or they can have two scoops of the sage and onion or try the cranberry sorbet.'

He hopes customers will try the new flavours, especially the savoury ones, even if it's just out of curiosity.

'People will think "wow! — sprout ice cream".

'It's an acquired taste, the sprout one, but it's done with proper vegetable stock and the sprouts have been peeled, boiled and cut up, with a touch of colouring.'

Iain said the selection process is down to trial and error, working out what works and what doesn't. He explained: 'You can make ice cream out of anything. I was going to do melon and prawn but the prawns come out like bullets — they're solid.'

Most of the ice creams and sorbets are made using natural ingredients, although in some cases they have to substitute the ingredients with flavourings. 'We try not to use one with nuts because of people with nut allergies,' Iain explained. 'We couldn't even use the same scoop if we did.'

The seasonal offerings include raspberry and port, champagne and strawberry, and melon and mint sorbets, marzipan and almond, pineapple and parsley, and chocolate flake and brandy ice cream during the festive period.