“It eats kind of fatty,” thought another. “It’s a stick of unsalted frozen butter,” one suggested. Texture-adding ingredients like soluble corn fiber and vegetable glycerin are meant to make up for the smaller amount of cream, but they ended up creating an oil slick on tasters’ palates. This relatively young brand has made big strides by positioning itself as a lower-calorie alternative that’s actually okay to consume by the pint. “But don’t buy this stuff.” And a pop fan invoked Ariana Grande with the ultimate dismissal: “Thank u, next!” (Price: $4.99 / 48 ounces at Food Lion / 10 cents per ounce) “#Staypuft, my friends,” concurred a third. Our tasters thought this was overwhipped. Alas, it seems I have been living a lie all these years, as our tasters found this one to be “boring” and “sad.” Several detected a slight aftertaste that they couldn’t put a finger on, and the consistency was described as “glacial” and “icy.” (Price: $5.99 / 48 ounces at Safeway / 12 cents per ounce) This was a personal heartbreaker for me: Growing up, we were Breyers People it was accepted as gospel that the brand was superior to all others. In a blind test, our panel of eight grabbed their spoons and started tasting, awarding each sample a score of 1 to 10 (meaning there’s a maximum overall score of 80), taking into account the taste and texture of each. Where we could, we opted for the “vanilla bean” flavor, figuring we were shooting for the most vanilla-y of each brand’s respective lineup. Private label, or store brands, make up the top slot, so we picked several popular ones from national retail chains. To help figure out which carton to grab from the grocery freezer, we rounded up the top-selling ice cream brands, using market data from Circana, a Chicago-based market research firm (its numbers came from grocery, drug, mass-market, convenience, military and select club, and dollar retailers, and covered the year that ended in May). With something as pared-down as vanilla ice cream, though, quality matters, and not all scoops are created equal.
Dull? More like classic, and for good reason. It’s also a perfectly great (even company-worthy) dessert on its own, topped with whatever fruit you’ve got or a drizzle of syrup or honey - or nothing at all. It shines alongside pies (or crumbles or buckles or slumps) bursting with summer farmers market bounty. Well, because it’s about as versatile as you can get.
And so why would you opt for plain old vanilla ice cream when there’s an ever-expanding dairy case stuffed with so many zany flavors and souped-up mix-ins? The word is even used as a synonym for a kind of drab ordinariness that’s definitely to be avoided in our colorful times.
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