To keep the ice cream as firm as possible, the tasting was conducted in stages, with two or three trays of pre-scooped ice cream brought out from the freezer at a Ben & Jerry’s Each participant in the tasting was asked to rate each brand on appearance, aroma, texture and flavor. This was a blind tasting, meaning tasters didn’t know which vanilla ice cream was which. Prices listed are what I paid - some brands were on sale. I did not buy membership-only club brands because I wanted ice cream the general public had a reasonable chance of buying. The ice creams were purchased near the Tribune’s Loop location at a Mariano’s, a Jewel-Osco in Rogers Park, and an Aldi and a Whole Foods Market, both in Evanston. “Vanilla extract” and “vanilla beans” were in one, “pure vanilla extract” in another, “natural flavor” in a third, “less than 2 percent of natural and artificial flavors” in a fourth and so on. Where these vanilla ice creams got their “vanilla” made for interesting label reading. I avoided those labeled as French vanilla or vanilla bean as being tasty variants on the vanilla theme. So, I headed to the supermarket, grabbed a shopping cart and looked for “vanilla” ice cream. With July being “Craving: Ice Cream” month for the Chicago Tribune’s food and dining staff, a vanilla ice cream tasting seemed called for. So popular is vanilla that Skip Rosskam, a consultant to the food and beverage industry and a vanilla expert, told me that some two-thirds of all ice cream eaten is either vanilla or vanilla with something stirred into it, like chocolate chips. A 2017 association survey of ice cream makers and retailers in the United States put vanilla in first place, followed by chocolate, cookies ’n’ cream, mint chocolate chip and chocolate chip cookie dough. “Vanilla is still America’s favorite ice cream flavor, and has held the top spot for many years,” wrote Kruse, manager of communications for the International Dairy Foods Association.
Why vanilla, you ask, instead of some ice cream studded with nuts or exotically swirled with chocolate fudge or named in tribute to a rock band or a popular television show? Audra Kruse had the answer in an email. What brand of “plain old” vanilla is best? Twelve were put to a blind taste test. Vanilla ice cream is vanilla ice cream is vanilla ice cream. These days, you can buy vanilla that’s low-fat or contains no added sugar or is even nondairy.īut I’m a purist. There are a lot of different vanillas out there, and I’m not just talking French vanilla or vanilla bean ice creams. Vanilla ice cream can seem so, well, vanilla, can’t it? But slow that shopping cart down in the ice cream aisle and take a gander at what’s actually being sold.
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