How ice cream became the ultimate American comfort food (2021) | Hacker News Reader

How ice cream became the ultimate American comfort food (2021)

eater.com

89 pointsrntn120 comments

My wife really wanted ice cream this summer, last summer we largely went without because we were eating low fat+low sugar. We got one of those Ninja Creami things and it's been pretty fantastic. Much better than the low cal ice cream options at the store. We can make a pint with between 120 and 300 calories, depending on what we do.

It's almost like a shaved ice machine on steroids, it has an impeller that starts at the top and moves down through the frozen mixture and then back up. It's a knock off of some $5,000 commercial machine. Instead of folding air and fat into the mixture while freezing, you freeze the container and then it completely destroys the ice crystals.

I tend to do a mix of a third cup of 0% yogurt, a tbsp of allulose (fairly expensive sugar substitute so most store products don't use it), a pinch of xantham gum, and then the remainder fruit (cherries, blueberries, mango, peaches, pears). I've also done a can of low sugar canned fruit, xantham gum, allulose, comes out kind of like a sorbet.

My wife does a base using low fat evaporated milk, and she gets a lot fancier (making low sugar mix ins, exotic flavors like coffee bourbon), and those come out much richer. Those are more like 260 calories/pint. It also allows you to taylor the flavor, for example I'm happy with mine much less sweet than grocery store ice creams.

It seemed fairly gimicky, and we avoided it for quite a while because of that, but she found it on sale for $150. Full price is $200, woot had them refurb for $100 last week. Fairly expensive, and noisy as hell, but we use it pretty much daily.

Wow, thanks for the tip about the Ninja Creami. I've been making ice cream daily for months using just a Nutribullet, but it's a lot of work. I use frozen mango, homemade almond milk, and flax. I don't use any sweeteners - mango is already sweet enough (especially living a sugar free life, my taste buds are more sensitive)

The Creami is definitely easy. My typical run takes me about a minute or two at most to make a pint, and my run is similar to yours (fruit, I use yogurt, allulose to overcome the bitterness of the yogurt). Try using some Xantham gum in yours, just a pinch, it helps keep it creamy. I should try adding flax or hemp hearts, thanks for that tip!

Do you need to blend it first before you put it into the container to be frozen, or can you simply put in the frozen fruit? I was looking into buying one but I wasn't able to figure that part out yet.

Not really. I'll stir it, but not blend it. Say I put in frozen strawberries, yogurt, xantham gum and allulose, I'll then stir it up... So huge chunks of strawberries in a yogurt. When I run it through the Creami, it comes out smooth pink. If I want chunks in it, I'll add fruit after it's done, then put it back in the Creami and push the "mix-in" button, which is a much slower, shorter run.

The main run of the Creami moves this blade down through the frozen mixture, taking ~3 minutes to go down through 4" and back up, so it does it in very small increments. Kind of ultra fine shaved ice plus blending all at the same time.

That sound wonderful, thank you for the detail!

How do you find the texture compared to traditional ice cream?

Right after it comes out of the Creami I'd say it's very similar to ice cream in texture. Depending on how you make it it can be more like soft serve or more like a regular ice cream, or more like a sorbet. After you put it back in the freezer, it gets pretty hard. You can either "respin" it at that point (the top does need to be left flat though, it doesn't handle one side being higher than the other), or I usually just microwave it 20 seconds.

I saw a video review by Sorted about this back in April[1]. It looks interesting.

I've been seeing the Pacojet (the commercial machine you mentioned) mentioned by various professional chefs for a while now. The Pacojet runs to AUD$10k here.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dneSgw3fmhg

I started looking at stuff like this and you know what stopped my search?

We started buying watermelon.

Get a watermelon, cut it in wedges and put it in a container in the fridge.

Then when it's dessert time, or time for a snack, or you're just hot and parched... pull out the container, get a fork or two and... bliss.

I don't know how healthy it works out to be, ...and I still might unpause my search.

Bump it up a crazy notch. Take that same watermelon, and eat a small slice of feta and basil with it. It's even more mouth watering, and now comes with added protein. This might be my favourite thing on earth - I'm finally off fresh figs.

And some Jamon Iberico or Proscuitto!

a friend salts their watermelon. (I personally think it's a little weird)

Works wonderfully well with mangoes as well. Peel and chop into large chunks. Freeze. You can eat them just like that, or pop them into a smoothie.

Nice. We have a vitamix blender which is another great approach to making healthy ice cream. Put in some frozen fruit, optionally add a splash of cream or coconut milk, turn it up to max and smash that fruit into the blades with the plunger and you get the creamiest sorbet / sherbet I've ever tasted.

We also have a Vitamix blender with the stick, I'll have to try that sometime. My feeling is it's probably pretty close to the Creami. And the Vitamix is obviously much more versatile, but it's also quite a lot more expensive. Ours is over a decade old though, so I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the Vitamix, but is it 4-10x better than a cheaper blender? The answer to that is going to depend on the person. It's a beast though!

If you have a Vitamix, you may not need a Creami.

Here in New England, we judge a town by how easy it is to get good ice cream (not from the market). We eat it year-round, even when it's snowing. In NH, we pour maple syrup on snow and eat that, also.

Most ice cream is too sweet - vanilla and pistachio are good choices.

I truly don't understand pistachio ice cream. Is it an acquired taste? Do you have to eat it as a small child to grow up liking it?

The problem with pistachio is that there are a lot of bad pistachio ice creams and gelatos (IMHO). There's really an art to getting it to where it both isn't bitter and isn't too sweet. Ben & Jerry's for example is typically way, way too sweet (in any flavour). There are a couple of exceptions but I can't eat B&J's Pistachio. YMMV.

My particular poison is pistachio of hazelnut gelato. In both cases with correct balance you get something with a nutty, creamy flavour.

It's not something I had until I was an adult so it's not a childhood thing either.

Do you have favorite pistachio brands? I’ve never really liked it, aside from one of the decent mass market brands, Breyer’s, perhaps.

Find an Indian grocery store and grab some from their freezer

Indian kulfi is also good, but it's not the same as Western ice cream, since the milk is intentionally caramelized during the preparation.

Like rum-raisin. It depends how they make it.

I've heard laboratorio del gelato in NYC is good. Never been to it --one day I may go pay a visit.

So years ago there used to be a gelato shop in the West Village called L'Arte del Gelato on the corner of Barrow St and 7th Ave if memory serves. It was right next to the Christopher St subway station and the place would actually shake when the trains went through.

They had an amazing pistachio gelato.

Years ago now the owners had some kind of split. I never knew the details but it resulted in that store changing its name. I honestly forget what to now. It's gone. But the other owner (I guess?) opened a store under the original name in Chelsea Market, which is still there today. I haven't been there in some years but I believe the pistachio gelato is the same. I would definitely recommend trying that.

Hm, to me, B&J's Pistachio Pistachio is one of their less sweet offerings. I used to like Cherries Garcia, but it's way too sweet for me these days.

At this point, everything Ben & Jerry's has way to much sugar/corn syrup/whatever.

The point of old school Ben & Jerry's was way too much cream. Apparently, that has gotten too expensive or too perishable for an industrial cold chain.

This might be a case where people genetically taste things differently, because pistachio ice cream wasn't an acquired taste for me at all. Just seems delicious, though maybe a hair off the map of the kind of taste you usually get in ice cream.

Hmm, that is an interesting thought that it might be like Cilantro where there is a genetic component.

i tried it as an adult and liked it the very first time. Its my go to flavor when i can't make up my mind.

The benefit of pistachio is supposed to be that it uses pistachio butter, which makes the ice cream creamier

Now a days, a lot of people just use pistachio extract, which mean the flavor has to stand on its own.

It’s a big thing in the Indian subcontinent.

My girlfriend judges icecream shops by their pistaccio. I really don't understand.. .

Lot of garbage places. It should taste closer to raw pistachios, but somewhat sweet. Color is closer to brown, it can be green but not bright green.

If it tastes like almond, it's terrible.

It’s the most delicious ice cream flavor. Pistachios in general, along with cashews, are god tier nuts

grape nut ice cream, kid.

or go north (or in your case, west) and get you a maple creemee

We often had home-made grape-nut and banana ice cream at my grandparents’.

Maple syrup on snow is amazing, I had that as a kid in Canada (Ontario and Quebec).

For real? When thinking about it it is quite strange there are no snow dishes to my knowledge.

Yah, you get some fresh snow, lay out popsicle sticks on it and then pour maple syrup over it and pick it up

https://happyhooligans.ca/make-maple-syrup-snow-candy-3-simp...

Its amazing.

There are a range of shaved ice deserts which are quite similar, sno-cones, hawaiian shaved ice, and some are popular in Asia as well.

Pistachio is the easy way for me to test an icecream store (I'm Italian).

It tells immediately if they are cheap (powder tastes like almond), or they used actual pistachio. The flavor gets better (and more expensive) the more pistachios are used.

Great point. You can also tell by the color: The brighter the green the worse the quality.

So, the only reason why I don't focus on the color is because in Rome there was a special icecream place (only store in a residential area) where they had TWO pistachios flavor and one was quite bright green, it was made of raw pistachios, while the other used roasted pistachios.

Both AMAZING. Since then, I give the benefit of the doubt even with the green color, even though 99% of the time it's disappointing.

Indian ice cream called kulfi is fantastic in pistachio and saffron flavors. Its much denser ice cream since air is not usually folded into it.

Eater is among the highest-quality food publications I’ve found. It’s my go-to restaurant finder when I visit new cities and has so far had a 100% success rate in delivering wonderful experiences – from taco trucks in Baja to fine dining in Denmark to gelato in Italy. It consistently delivers, and it is all due to the sincerity of their editorial team.

Their YouTube channel is also fantastic. Them and the First We Feast, Bon Apetit folks are my comfort watches

We had some freshly made ice cream at the Tillamook Creamery in Oregon: https://www.facebook.com/TillamookCreamery. They get the milk piped into the building. It was so much better fresh.

Visited last year and tried to stop, the line was so long that we gave up and just bought it at the grocery store. Still very good.

Do Americans eat more ice cream than, say, Italians?

I don’t know, but the cost of a scoop of ice cream in the states is like $4… maybe more. In Amsterdam, you get it everywhere for €1.50 to €2. So, when it is summertime, an ice cream a day is pretty typical consumption. Meaning, it has become more luxury to have ice cream in the states. (Maybe I’m wrong, this is a sense I have, open to correction).

I live in the US and I don't think I've ever paid $4 for a scoop of ice cream in the US, but I haven't bought a scoop in the last two months, so perhaps the recent supply chain/inflation issues have happened.

There is one place I know that charges $4 for what they call a single scoop, but it is about 3x bigger than any scoop elsewhere, and it's a pricey place in general ($8.50 for a malt).

I paid $5.75 for one (including tax) in Sierra Madre (suburban LA) yesterday.

It depends on where you go. It could cost half that if you went to, like, thrifty ice cream instead of what I'm guessing was a Salt and Straw. To say nothing of the men with bells selling icecream all over LA county on a given day...

Mother Moo

You are right Handel’s was cheaper per scoop

Two kiddie sugar cones yesterday in NH, $4.75 each.

You can buy ice cream by the gallon (4.5 litres!!) in the US. It can’t be that expensive! In the UK half a litre (a pint) is considered a lot of ice cream.

5 quarts (4.7 liters) is common size. Yes, it's cheap. But not usually very good quality, though.

In the gallon size that is probably true. Nobody really buys it in that size unless they're feeding a gaggle of children at a birthday party who don't give two shits about how awful the ice cream quality is.

Personally, I prefer my ice cream to have exactly four ingredients: milk, cream, sugar, cocoa. The end. Nothing else. I've had to switch brands a couple times because they cave to pressure to make their chocolate ice cream more creamy. No! I like it a bit dry, it's got cocoa in it! LOL

Me, too! Tends to be a bit more pricey, but well worth it, in my opinion.

> I prefer my ice cream to have exactly four ingredients: milk, cream, sugar, cocoa

No egg yolks?

Not in chocolate ice cream, no. At least, not in the kinds I've liked best. And, I guess, I don't really like eggs in vanilla either. French vanilla just tastes off to me.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that my preferred ice cream style is "philadelphia style"

Are we talking about eating it all yourself or sharing with the entire family?

That's the size it's available in, so either.

I mean, it's icecream. It's good in the freezer for a _long_ time.

You can, but most people don't unless it's for a party or something. Even then, it's almost always by the half gallon (which, of course, isn't actually a full half gallon any more) or pint. The latter becoming more common of late.

Maybe it’s changed, but growing up in Wisconsin those gallon pails of Kemps seemed pretty ubiquitous.

You can usually only find cheap low quality ice cream in gallon sizes.

> I don’t know, but the cost of a scoop of ice cream in the states is like $4…

Only in hip ice cream places. $4 is about the going rate for those 1.5 quart (1.4 liter) cartons at the grocery store.

Hip places charge like $15 for a cup of ice cream and do weird (but tasty) gastronomy gimmicks like liquid nitrogen freezing or maltodextrin usage. You pay more than $4 at normie chains like coldstone.

Coldstone serves 5-12oz plus toppings made and mixed on-premise. Something like a food truck cup or cone is closer to $2. Baskin Robbins is perhaps $3 for a one scoop cone. But like the other user said, many Americans would rather buy a half gallon or gallon from a grocery store or c-store for $5 and eat too much of it. :)

The grocery store is always going to be cheaper. $4 is the low end of a single scoop in the bay area. And not for some hipster, plant-based organic ice cream either, this is at a regular parlor like Fenton's.

Dairy Queen. If “regular parlor” is followed by a restaurant not present outside of the bay, it’s not going to be representative.

At the Baskin Robbins closet to SF (Daly City) a single scoop is $3.59. After tax that's pretty close to $4 for the most chain-est ice cream I could think of. (The DQ doesn't have photos of their menu on Google maps).

Dairy Queen doesn't serve ice cream. Not being snobbish or pedantic here – soft serve is a separate kind of product. Dairy Queen doesn't call it ice cream (probably because it legally cannot be)

Baskin Robbins is by far the most ubiquitous ice cream chain in the Bay Area and a single scoop is right around $3 as of a few months ago.

I’m not sure why you mention Fenton’s. I’m only aware of a single location in Oakland and I would describe it as fairly high-end. Perhaps not “hip,” but definitely very “retro” stylized. Very Instagramable. Long lines.

There's not a lot of chains in the bay. This is really the most basic one I have been to.

$4? Maybe if you're buying artisanal gelato from SF, West LA or Manhattan. Think Salt and Straw.

Salt & Straw is higher than that. $4 used to be the kids scoop price, but that was like five years ago.

Even Rite Aid is up to like $2/scoop

The quantity of ice cream that is considered a "scoop" is very country dependent. The American scoop is... American.

And volumetric! (Having a hard time seeing people weighing servings at the ice cream parlor, though.)

Yeah, I'm still shocked when I want two flavors and they give me those giant balls...

In Italy we have the opposite problem though. Since the scoop size doesn't have a standard, you might find the server in training and get a gelato that's half the size of the one of your friend, which paid half the price

In MA.

A pint of ben and jerry's has been $5 for me; going up to $6 during supply chain woes.

A good ice cream shop is more like $5, but the cost scaling is weird and you can normally get like 3x more ice cream for 1.2x cost with larger sizes. The scoops are large. Per volume I think its much more expensive in other countries personally.

Typically a scoop in the us is two to three times that in Amsterdam.

Used to be 1DM back in my days...

Yes, at least if you follow the weird requirements to qualify as “ice cream” in the US. The gelatos that Italians usually enjoy do not have enough butterfat to be considered “ice cream” by the USDA. So strictly speaking, people in Italy eat very little “ice cream” because their traditional recipes don’t use enough fat.

Incidentally, this is why places that serve Italian-style ice cream have to explicitly market it as “gelato” and not “ice cream”.

Total derailment from your actual question, but a

Yeah some quick searches suggest we eat ~3x as much as Italy but it's hard to tell what all is being included in worldatlas.com or whatever

Notably there's also sherbets, frozen custards, soft-serve, frozen yogurt and a shit ton of cheap frozen-dairy-dessert. Not counting the various non-dairy frozen stuff like granita, sorbet, "Italian ice"

VS whatever else they're eating over in Italy

Similarly, a lot of the dairy desserts sold by fast food in the U.S. isn't considered ice cream. E.g. nothing sold by Dairy Queen can be called ice cream.

Ironically if you can label your frozen dessert as gelato it will demand a higher price

Probably because it is better

That's funny. Thank you for the explanation. I've come to Canada and people started talking to me about the difference between gelato and icecream. I kept saying "to me there is garbage gelato and good gelato" (I'm Italian), so I had no idea what they were talking about

The confusion is also caused by the fact that in Italy, gelato is always translated in English as "ice cream", but for English speaking people they are different things.

J.J. McCullough made an informative and entertaining video about the history of American ice cream as well. He makes a lot of videos diving into the history of American (as well as Canadian, as he's Canadian) culture:

https://youtu.be/gvT3FHLy484

I think this article fails to support the claim that ice cream is the ultimate American comfort food.

One of the first things we bought when the pandemic hit was an ice cream maker.

Is the ice-cream barge a recent revelation or am I just attuned to seeing references to it? I only learned about it recently and since then it's popped up multiple times.

It tastes good and is cheap , i guess

It’s pretty amazing that it’s cheap. A lot to be taken for granted in that statement.

https://www.humanprogress.org/from-palace-to-parlour-the-sto...

Given the prevalence of lactose intolerance I think it’s hard to classify ice cream as “the ultimate” comfort food.

When I hear people talking about “comfort food” it’s usually talking about simple (easy to prepare), high-carbohydrate foods with balanced proteins like mac & cheese, spaghetti & meatballs, pizza, grilled cheese sandwiches, etc. The stuff you’d feed to children with unsophisticated palettes and an unending desire for calories and protein.

So ice cream isn't the ultimate comfort food because of lactose intolerance but that's a factor in 3 of the 4 other foods you mentioned.

You also say an "unednding desire for calories and protein". *Protein?" Where? Even with metaballs you're not really eating that much meat (aka protein). Did you mean fat?

It's kind of a weird take overall. Ice cream clearly has huge cultural significance in the US as a comfort food.

> "Protein?" Where?

Cheese is very high in protein. It's basically concentrated milk. Obviously not lactose free though.

Hard cheeses tend to be low in lactose, often enough to not bother people who are moderately lactose intolerant.

Cheese is low lactose compared to cream.

Ice cream has far, FAR more lactose than most cheeses, especially hard cheeses.

Just a quick look-up online—a 50g serving of ice cream has something like 1.6g lactose. The same amount of cheddar has around 0.05g lactose, and mozarella has around 0.03g. That’s like a factor of 30x-50x.

This explains why even people who don’t think they are lactose intolerant still have digestive problems when they eat ice cream, but have no problems with cheese.

Ice cream may be culturally significant, I just haven’t heard it called a comfort food before.

I’m also a bit confused about the protein comment. Go read the nutritional facts for cheese some time. Cheddar is about 1/4 protein by mass.

https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/328637/n...

>Ice cream may be culturally significant, I just haven’t heard it called a comfort food before.

That's strange, a famous pop cliché is "crying eating icecream from the tub watching movies on the couch".

I just asked a couple Americans what foods they thought of as “comfort food” and nobody listed ice cream. Take it how you will, it’s just anecdotes.

There are so many dairy free options nowadays, I hardly feel the inconvenience of lactose intolerance. Including on ice cream.

Dairy free ice cream tastes horrible. But lactose-free ice cream tastes exactly like any other ice cream. I wish all ice cream was made lactose free.

I've found quite a few good coconut/soy milk based ice-creams in terms of flavour. Once you spend time noticing the texture though (e.g. xanthan gum) they can become unpleasant. That's what ultimately made me stop buying them.

> The stuff you’d feed to children

Perhaps that's why it's comforting? Reminds you of a simpler time, dad taking you out for ice cream on a summer day.

Also hearty food traditional to the culture(s) you exist in.

When I’m in the UK, bangers and mash. In Central Europe some cutlet and sauerkraut.

This is also because I ate it with my grandparents and they probably enjoyed it from the war when meat was scarce and it was hard to get food from other lands. Like you say, a simpler time.

There's twofood related experiences I want my kid to know me for:

1. Going out for icecream.

2. Pancakes at home on the weekend.

Of course, non-food related experiences I hope to add up to much more.

Sugar is both serotonergic and dopaminergic, IIRC. Not as fast and intensely as alcohol, but it's pretty good.

> lactose intolerance

> mac & cheese

> pizza

> grilled cheese sandwiches

I think I have some bad news for you about where cheese comes from…

> not understanding that cheese is enjoyed by cultures all over the world as a way to consume dairy without bothering digestion

> "bad news" for someone who obviously can't eat ice cream but knows they have no problem with mac and cheese

(sounds almost like gpt but ithink even a robot ought to pick that up..)

>Not understanding that cheese generally still has lactose in it, and thus can still be problematic for lactose-intolerant humans.

Turns out the world is full of nuance. But generally speaking, humans with lactose intolerance will have trouble enjoying the consumption of dairy-based products... Including - you guessed it! Cheese!

Certainly, some hard cheeses are lower in lactose. But that which constitutes Mac & Cheese? Oof.

In the US, the most common cheese in mac & cheese has got to be cheddar. Cheddar is low in lactose. “Fancy” mac & cheese might use gruyère instead, which is also often acceptable to people with lactose intolerance.

If you’re gonna mock me at least get one of your facts straight.

Ice cream has something like 50x as much lactose, by weight, as mozarella cheese. That’s why people who are lactose intolerant often have no problems eating cheeses, or at least certain cheeses in limited quantities. However, even people who think that they’re not lactose intolerant have digestive problems after eating ice cream—it turns out that it’s quite common for people to have some degree of lactose intolerance and be unaware of it.

Plenty of good tasting plant based ice creams… I don’t even bother eating the real thing unless i’m out somewhere

Is lactose intolerance more common in the US than in Europe? In my country no one ever bothers with offering lactose-free products.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com