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The Ice Cream thread


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We can discuss all sorts of aspects here, but what I'm wondering right now is this:  What flavors of ice cream are considered normal where you live?  That's actually a two-part question:

 

1.  What are the basic flavors that you would you expect to find in a small establishment offering only a handful of choices?

 

2.  What are the standard flavors, i.e., ones you wouldn't be surprised to see in just about any ice-cream shop or grocery freezer?

 

Here in the US, this seems to vary from region to region.  In the Midwest, the traditional basic flavors are vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry (in declining order of occurrence), but when I lived in New England it was vanilla, chocolate, and coffee.  Those flavors are also the ones generally found in the regional varieties of Neopolitan ice cream (an Americanized version of spumoni).

 

Just off the top of my head, traditional standard flavors include rocky road, butter pecan, and fudge swirl.

 

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:D You're making my mouth water...

 

Here in Germany, our ice cream parlors mostly serve Italian ice cream, which is a bit different from the stuff I've usually had in the US. An American friend of mine referred to the kind of ice cream we get here as "Gelato". It's a bit thinner, less heavy. I don't know if it actually has less fat, but it gives that impression.

 

While in the US, I'm used to ordering a serving size (like small, medium, large - whoever manages to eat large, I have trouble enough with small), here in Germany, we order a number of scoops. One scoop usually costs about 80 cents, and it's really just that, one scoop. A standard helping is two or three scoops, which is less than an American small (it's like half a small). And you choose a different flavor for every scoop.

 

Standard flavors are for example vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, pistachio, chocolate chip ("Stracciatella"), tiramisu, lemon (which is more like sherbert), hazelnut, amarena cherry. Lots of places offer yogurt ice cream, too, now (not the same as frozen yogurt).

 

My favorite flavor is mint chocolate chip. I used to eat nothing but that in the US, because I couldn't get it in Germany, but of late, lots of ice cream parlors here offer it too. They call it "After Eight", because that's the name of a mint chocolate brand. Then there's one place near where I live now that has something they call "cherry kiss". Basically, it's chocolate ice cream with chocolate chips and cherries in it, mixed with cherry sauce. Mmmm...

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I used to have After Eight mints as a child.  Those are good.  I'm from the Midwest so what Carol said is so true.  Another big one here is the mint chip/bon bon and also chocolate chip.  Since I have to be dairy free I get a brand that uses coconut milk in place of the cow's milk & the chocolate variety tastes like a mounds bar.

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... there's one place near where I live now that has something they call "cherry kiss". Basically, it's chocolate ice cream with chocolate chips and cherries in it, mixed with cherry sauce. Mmmm...

Ooo my, that sounds delicious! Sort of like a cherry cordial.

 

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Oh, I want ice cream. Now! :D

 

Anyway, the basic flavours here are usually vanilla, chocolate, pistachio, lemon and strawberry. These you can get basically everywhere.

 

There are many other flavours that wouldn't surprise me and are considered as standard like blueberry, straciatella, hazelnut, mint with chocolate chips (my personal favourite), banana, apricot and for example blue ice cream for kids that's called "Smurf".

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Pistachio is an old classic flavor here, but not at all easy to find these days.  Lemon would be sherbet rather than actual ice cream, and not necessarily available everywhere (the most common sherbet is orange).

 

Some of your no-surprise flavors are also common here -- nobody's heard of "straciatella," but T.o.b.y says that's chocolate chip, and we sure have that, as well as mint chocolate chip.  I've had banana and hazel-nut a few times, but those are specialty flavors here.  Blueberry and apricot sound delicious, but I've never even seen them -- or Smurf!

 

I'm allergic to cow's milk, though, and haven't eaten much ice cream since I found out -- so my knowledge is based mostly on experiences twenty or thirty years back.  For all I know, they sell Smurf ice cream at Kroger's now!

 

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I haven't seen Smurf ice cream here yet.  The closest is probably blue raspberry or bubble gum.  I like the brand So Delicious for their dairy free ice creams and they have some fun flavors as well as the traditional stuff.  They even have gluten free chocolate chip cookie dough and gluten free cookies & cream which makes my son very happy on the rare occasion we get ice cream.

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You know what I like, though? Milkshakes. Especially chocolate with whipped cream on top and a drizzling of chocolate syrup with it.

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Milkshakes are really good.  So are homemade smoothies.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I love milkshakes, too. Especiall with coconut icecream in the summertime, it's so refreching!

 

I've just returned from my holiday which I spent at the German sea. There are my two favourite ice cream parlours in the world: One just makes great ice cream and waffles, and the other has an extreme number of ice cream flavours (though this year I was a bit late, the icecream season had already ended): This year I tried baked apple, white chocolate and weeds :lol:.

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Hi, Schlauer Fuchs -- glad to see you back (and glad you had a good vacation).

 

Interesting that your milkshakes contain ice cream, like ours do here in Indiana (and in most of the US).  In parts of the east (such as Boston), there's no ice cream in them -- if you order a chocolate milkshake there, they basically just take chocolate milk and shake it.  Or maybe it's a mix of milk and soda water with flavored syrup.  But anyhow, I never could figure out how that was supposed to be any better than "plain" chocolate milk.

 

If you want a rest-of-the-country milkshake in Boston, you have to order a "thick shake" or else go to Friendly's and order a Fribble.

 

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Same in Maine, a milkshake was shook milk! To get a milkshake you had to order a frappe. I'm not sure that's still true, though, at least the place where I go. I've noticed a lot of regional differences are slowly being blended out into general "Americana."

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Oh, right, frappe -- thanks, I knew I was omitting something.  They use that word very commonly in Boston as well (and for the sake of those who know the word in other contexts, when it means milkshake in Boston, it's pronounced "frap").

 

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I tried to find out what the current terminology is in Boston by checking the Brigham's site, but found that their ice cream is now sold only in grocery stores.  No more Brigham's ice cream shops!   :cry:   But the good news is that they're still making their special holiday flavor, frozen pudding!

 

And this article from just last year uses the word frappe right in the title.  :D

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  • 6 months later...

Haha wauw why do we've got a ice cream thread. That is so random?! :goldfish:

 

Nevertheless, isn't ice cream the same everywhere? I mean.. It isn't a cultural thing. Is it? If it was we would probably have some kind of cheesy ice cream (cheese being typically Dutch)

 

Any shop I go to in Holland is either an American brand or has American products. So I guess it would be the same, right? 

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There are some variations depending on where in the world you are but a lot of it is the same globally.

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I wonder if they still have Donald Duck ice cream in Thailand? They had coconut ice cream, it was soooooo good.....

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... in Maine, a milkshake was shook milk! To get a milkshake you had to order a frappe.

They use that word very commonly in Boston as well (and for the sake of those who know the word in other contexts -- when it means milkshake in Boston, it's pronounced "frap").

Rhode Island has its own word for such a concoction as well, a "cabinet" (though I have no idea why).

  

... isn't ice cream the same everywhere? I mean.. It isn't a cultural thing. Is it? If it was we would probably have some kind of cheesy ice cream (cheese being typically Dutch)

 

Any shop I go to in Holland is either an American brand or has American products. So I guess it would be the same, right?

 

Well, yes and no.  All I can say from personal experience is that it used to be difficult to find coffee ice cream in Indiana or strawberry ice cream in Boston, even though each was the third most common flavor in its native habitat.  Nowadays of course there are lots of specialty ice-cream stores with dozens of flavors, but I suspect that if you go to a place that offers only three flavors, you'll still find coffee in Boston and strawberry in Indiana.  Everybody seems to have chocolate and vanilla.

 

Same thing holds with soft drinks (alias soda pop or carbonated beverages).  Everybody (in the whole world, apparently) has Coca-Cola and a few others.  But then there are the regional specialties (or at least there used to be -- I haven't checked lately).   A sort of vanilla flavor called cream soda is common in the eastern US, not so much elsewhere.  And New York City has both a celery-flavored soft drink and something called Moxie (which I used to think was a joke made up by Mad Magazine).  I don't recall Boston having any specialty flavors, but they do have their own name for soft drinks, namely "tonic" (pronounced "tawn-ick").

 

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A lot of the "country" stores, and even some of the grocery stores around here carry soda from "small brewers"; you can get things like birch beer, ginger beer, sarsparilla, fruit flavors etc. that you don't normally get from major companies. Maine Root makes the most amazing ginger beer....

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We have those micro-pop-makers around here, too.  My niece and her husband are partial to one called Indiana Brewing Company -- I've never tasted any of their products, but they do have neat old-fashioned glass bottles.

 

Speaking of ginger ale/beer, there was a local brand available when we lived in western New York State.  I don't offhand recall the name, but it was STRONG.  We referred to it as Drāno (which may be why I don't recall the actual name).

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I've found it: a typical Dutch kind of ice cream.

 

It must be a parody on B&J, I mean... This couldn't be real.

7124433ff10a3f42b26bb02e7b954e32.jpg

Yes, that's right. Weed ice cream. It is out there. It really is

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And is that Stephen Colbert I see on the "Americone Dream" ?

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And is that Stephen Colbert I see on the "Americone Dream" ?

Looks like it.

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