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?

  • @[email protected]
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    79 hours ago

    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~!

  • @[email protected]
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    181 day ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
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      622 hours ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]
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        418 hours ago

        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.

  • @[email protected]
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    141 day ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
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      41 day ago

      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.

    • @[email protected]
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      51 day ago

      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

  • @[email protected]
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    682 days ago

    Making ice cream with actual apples involved is a nightmare due to acidity influencing other ingredients. But making it apple-scented is trivial.

    But you raised a very good question…

  • @[email protected]
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    222 days ago

    you’d end up with apple cider vinegar as your flavorant, and that doesn’t play well with milk.

    • ettyblatant
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      41 day ago

      What, you don’t like cold soured apple curd tart cream? It has nutmeg in it!

    • @[email protected]
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      121 day ago

      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.