Ice Cream: Purity or Density?

Summer is around the corner and what better time to discuss one of my favorite foods - ice cream!

It seems there are two very general types of ice cream - those with a single "transparent" flavor (vanilla, chocolate) and those with an assortment of "stuff" mixed into the ice cream (nuts, fruits, cookie chunks, you name it).

I'm from the school that believes ice cream is most delicious in a "pure" form. I like solid flavors without the distraction of chunks and bits.

Which side do you favor. Or should I say, which side do you flavor?

Jeff

I agree.

It was a humid day in the Northeast and after dinner I decided to take the slow route home walking with my first ice cream cone of the season. Salted caramel. Not spectacular, but a good first effort and one of the few good things (along with fresh fruit) about summer heat.

But yes, I'll enjoy a bit of textural contrast from the main flavor component, i.e. some citrus zest in a citrus ice cream or cherry peel in cherry, but the whole sludgy Ben and Jerry's-esque Kitchen Sink flavor model never really appealed to me and still doesn't. It's too unfocused.

I'm not a big fancier of sweets in general, but my all time favorite ice cream experience was a bowl of cantaloupe gelato from Vivoli's on a sweltering Summer day in Florence, Italy. More generally, my favorite experiences have been with fruit ice creams and sorbets, so I'm going with purity.

Mark Lipton

[Robin Garr]

The division of the question is insufficient for me. I like plain ice cream, and I like chips in ice cream. I'm generally not crazy about pieces of fruit in ice cream, although it depends on the fruit. And I loathe chunks of cookie dough, pie crust and similar pollutants in ice cream.

Ah...ice cream! Mom was an accountant for a creamery in Minnesota. She was also called on to taste test new flavors (which always surprised me since this was in the first half on the 20th century and I didn't know they experimented with flavors much). Anyway, the point is, ice cream was always important in our family and I've carried on the tradition.
I generally like pure flavors in a chewy texture, chocolate being my #1. I do not mind too much if there's other things like chunks of really good cookie dough or fudge or swirls of caramel but I do not like fruit, chunks of chocolate bars or anything hard.

It's all good!

My very favorite ice cream is produced by Hayward's in Nashua NH. Specifically, their French vanilla. It's very decadent, with liberal use of eggs. Served in a still-warm, freshly made New England-style waffle cone, it's heaven on Earth!

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Not much of an ice cream fan. I never seek it out on my own but the hubby is a big fan so the occasional stop at Baskin Robbins happens, and I never deviate from a single scoop of Jamocha Almond Fudge on a sugar cone, so I guess that decides my answer to the question on the side of density, as it contains whole almonds.

Kinda mixed opinions on this one. I love pure flavors, too, so I tend towards the simpler ice creams. At the same time, my definition of "pure flavors" includes oddities like whiskey-chocolate-raspberry gelato at Devines in Sacramento (YUM!) so...not too purist.

My favorite ice cream in the retail market right now is Mexican Chocolate from Berkeley's The Final Scoop. I am supposed to be kinda/sorta/blah blah blah on a "diet" now, but I broke down last night.