Vanilla gets a bad rap. It’s boring, the haters say. It’s bland. The word is even used as a synonym for a kind of drab ordinariness that’s definitely to be avoided in our colorful times. 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?
Well, because it’s about as versatile as you can get. It shines alongside pies (or crumbles or buckles or slumps) bursting with summer farmers market bounty. 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. Dull? More like classic, and for good reason.
With something as pared-down as vanilla ice cream, though, quality matters, and not all scoops are created equal. 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). Private label, or store brands, make up the top slot, so we picked several popular ones from national retail chains. 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.
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. Here’s the scoop:
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLOwu8NoaWlqY2R9d3uRcWabnaOperetzaKjpZldnrCmecKrnJqlXZe%2ForrDrGY%3D