Why isn't apple a popular ice cream flavor?
Why isn't apple a popular ice cream flavor?
My local grocery store has started stocking a "limited edition" apple pie ice cream (message me for the details, don't want to be shilling). It's one of my favorites -- not only does it have chunks of real apple and graham cracker crust, but the ice cream itself has a delicious apple flavor. The whole thing tastes like you took a slice of apple pie with vanilla ice cream and blended it chunky style.
I always figured there was some boring food-science reason you couldn't make a decent apple ice cream, but this shows it's perfectly possible. So why isn't it more common? Apple pie is one of the most popular deserts, and you find apple flavoring in plenty of drinks and candies. What gives?
Because it's too expensive to crunch up a whole iPhone just for one cone.
This should be higher. Even broken iPhones from 3 years ago sell for tens or hundreds of euros.
I've recently had a similar discussion on why orange ice cream isn't that popular, but exists in form of water ice
Our conclusion was that acidic flavors, like orange and apple just aren't good combined with cream, instead being better served as a sorbet
What about orange creamsicles?
That sort of goes along with his point. The orange part is separate from the cream part.
Orange creamcicle flavored ice cream is pretty easy to find. But I think it's usually vanilla ice cream with layers of orange sherbet. Strawberries are acidic and strawberry ice cream is a popular flavor.
In my experience, apples just don't taste very good when frozen. Maybe that's why they don't sell frozen apples at most supermarkets?
I make ice cream as a hobby and found orange ice cream is too rich to eat even a scoop in one sitting. It's completely possible but it's hard to eat.
I had this delightful tangerine sorbet. a golfball scoop is all we needed
Ok. Why is apple or grape sorbet uncommon?
Yup. Sorbet is often made with orange or lemon flavours.
Lemon ice cream is great, though.
Also, apples, acidic..? I hate all apples except Granny Smiths because they taste sweet and cloying as fuck... Granny Smiths are the only ones I've ever found with a nice acidic taste...
you'd end up with apple cider vinegar as your flavorant, and that doesn't play well with milk.
What, you don't like cold soured apple curd tart cream? It has nutmeg in it!
Why isn't orange (the fruit) ice cream more popular? I don't mean sherbet, I mean ice cream. It can be bought in Florida, but I've never heard of it anywhere else.
I feel silly asking since you mentioned Florida, but do they use real oranges? Any time I've ever seen or tasted orange ice cream it was always that fake stuff.
I do believe it's made with real orange, especially if you're get it from a street vendor near the beach. Been years since I had it.
I've wondered about the same but with kiwi fruit it's delicious and refreshing yet you don't see any flavored drinks or ice cream with that flavor.
Kiwi and pineapples have enzyme to break proteins down, causing it taste better if they have contact to diary products long enough. Canned pineapples don't have this issue but I haven't seen canned kiwi, maybe that explains no kiwi ice cream
Maybe. I have seen pineapple flavored drinks though
I suspect it's related to the difficulty in processing. Kiwi fruit are quite small and non-trivial to extract the flesh from. This would make it more expensive to extract.
This is less of an issue now that a few decades back. However, most people are quite conservative on their juice choices. Low sales still mean higher cost, which reduces sales.
In the US we have a lot of strawberry kiwi flavored drinks. Rarely just kiwi by itself though.
I'd drink it. Still just kiwi would be great imho
Where do you live? Where I live (Austria), apple ice cream is maybe not 100% universally available at all ice cream vendors, but common enough that I have no problems getting it if I want to.
Southeastern US. This is my first time seeing apple-anything ice cream on the shelves, from major national brands at least.
Hm. I rarely buy ice cream in stores so I am not sure whether there is apple ice cream in stores here, but at ice cream parlors it is definitely reasonably common here.
Corporate studies show that the most popular ice cream flavors are the flavors we've always made and new flavors are risky because we don't know how popular they will be and so we only do the same flavors so we're always right.
Same reason why you only get reboots and remakes, it's a safer bet for investment.
Because CaPiTaLiSm BrEeDs InNoVaTiOn~!
Caramelized apple ice cream is amazing !
Wait... do you mean caramel apple ice cream, or caramelized apple ice cream? They're not the same...
Idk but grape icrecream is illegal
I'm not really into sweets, but one day i saw a bar of chocolate with grapes on it, and i was like: chocolate with pockets full of grapes? Ymmi. At home i unpacked it and stuffed it in my mouth.
I almost threw up because it wasn't grapes, it was grappa. Of course we can't have nice things, we have to waste grapes on rotten ugly juice.
Chocolate with raisins is super common though...
Forget apple, we need more banana/banana creme ice cream flavors.
Even better, bananas foster flavor
A major reason I got an ice cream machine was to make banana ice cream!
Apples turn brown when you freeze them.
While that is the case, modern industrial ice cream rarely contains the actual fruit. Just take standard Neutro mix, regenerate it with water, not milk, and add some food coloring (a light green), an acidic component like citric acid, and "natural" "apple" flavor.
It's a popular flavor in new england. Gifford's has apple pie seasonally at their ice cream stands. They also have pumpkin pie ice cream which is my favorite.
Little boutique place near us has an "Apple Cheddar Pie" ice cream in the fall. It's never quite as good as you expect. Gotta try it again this year, to see how they've changed it.
(On the other hand, their Lemon Curd Blueberry is one of the greatest things ever served in a cone in the history of humankind.)
There is such a variety of apples it's hard to pick one apple flavor.
Granny Smith. You're welcome.
Is it the one I saw at ALDI? (or possibly the same supplier)
It was pretty freaking good ngl
damn good question
The ice cream joint neat my house makes a honey apple gelato that's pretty incredible, not sure why we don't see it around more
Most apple flavored stuff sucks, except for apples.
Apple brandy would like a word. One of my favorite liquors, it's fantastic.
Apple brandy counts as a serving of fruit, not apple flavored.
I really wish I had one of those fancy ice cream makers like they have on cooking shows like Iron Chef because I would definitely see what happens if you tried to make apple ice cream. I don't know if I can get fancier than just basic ingredients with mine... Maybe if I made an apple compote? 🤔
I think it just works better making apple pie ala mode ice cream Cold Stone style with some vanilla ice cream, pie filling, graham cracker crust and caramel.
Do you have a
KitchenAidstand mixer or anything like that? Best thing I ever learned is making ice cream with dry ice. I just put the base in the mixer, start it with the paddle, and start putting in crushed up dry ice, one spoonful at a time. I managed to get dry ice in the little cubes or pellets, put it in a cloth sack, and then use a hammer or blunt object to break it up into small pieces.
The same reason they took it back out of skittles and no one gets apple flavored suckers. It isn't up to snuff.
It's probably not as common because other flavors are significantly more popular. Chocolate, vanilla, and berry flavors are staple flavors. There's only so much milk, production capacity, and retail shelf space to go around.
I've noticed, though, local ice cream shops are usually more willing to take a risk worth novelty flavors.
I'd love if it was more popular!
Mighy try and make at home. Parfait ice cream is reasonably uncomplicated. Wonder if I should make it from dried apples.
Proprietary ice cream lmao
I came in thinking this was a dad joke sub..lol.. and was like wait .. this a not a punch line.. now we need to find a dad joke for this question..
HEB?
Pure speculation on my part, but it's probably a safe guess to assume some market studies and/or trial runs they did on the flavor showed it wouldn't make enough profit. It's always about the money. I'm sure many people would buy it and enjoy it, but we are talking about corporations run by people with expensive college degrees in min-maxing everything for profit.
As I have lost the only vegan cheese dip in existence (in my country at least) do to that, I can totally believe it.
I'm still sad about the cheese, it was perfect for tacos and all things melted cheese.
That's a bummer. I have noticed products like that will often vanish. Or drop dramatically in quality when they swap out quality ingredients for cheaper ones.
Maybe, but you definitely see more niche flavors like pistachio, coffee, mango, pineapple-coconut, rum raisin, etc. Hard to believe apple would be less popular, unless it's more expensive to make for some reason.
Maybe it's less popular because so many people buy ice cream to eat with actual apple pie, or some other kind of pie which might taste weird with apple pie flavors.
Jesus. So you expect companies to produce products that lose money?!
Or, do you expect them to remove more profitable products, which by definition are widely loved, from the limited shelf space and replace them with less profitable products, which by definition, fewer people enjoy? You'd fail running a lemonade stand.
Profits are fine. Have you not been paying attention to skimplflation, CEO bonuses, etc? That's the min-max mindset I'm talking about here.
I'm not sure if I'd personally like apple that much. I like apples and the flavor is refreshing and good, but I just don't think it'd fit ice cream of all things. Though, if I had one, I wouldn't be opposed to trying it and I'd rather try apple flavor than something gross lol
Artificial apple flavor is awful and that is what most companies would use.
Applesauce ice cream sounds foul.