Nothing hits our nostalgic soft spot quite like the sweet cooling treat of summer — ice cream. That serotonin release when our childhood lips came in contact with frozen sugar forever sealed some of our best memories with the dessert. Yet, the ice cream of the past hasn’t all survived to the present. Below are just a handful of flavors that have melted away from today’s ice cream menus.
Tutti Frutti
Countless famous singers of the 1950s sang about this flavor. The candy, gum, and even the jelly bean have encapsulated this flavor that means “all of the fruit.” Yet, the ice cream flavor has seemingly vanished from the frozen dessert scene. While some nostalgic ice cream parlors still carry this flavor, it’s not going to be easy to find.
Teaberry
Teaberry ice cream is made from the teaberry (also called a checkerberry or wintergreen plant). It has a minty taste with a creamy pink hue. It was one of the many popular mint flavors in 1960s’ Pennsylvania, but it didn’t have the staying power of mint chocolate chip and didn’t reach beyond the Northeast. If you want to try some teaberry, you can still find it in independently owned ice cream shops in Pennsylvania.
Tin Roof Sundae
Made famous by a Nebraska ice cream joint in the 1930s, the tin roof sundae was vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, and Spanish peanuts. The flavor was picked up by ice cream manufacturers and had all of the sundae toppings swirled into the ice cream base. It was sold by the Blue Bell brand from 1980 until 2019 and hasn’t made a comeback since.
Bubble Gum
An opposite to many fancy gorumet flavors of today, bubble gum had none of the earthy-sweet or acidic contrast going on. It was sweet through and through. The cheery artificial blue color made it easily recognizable at ice cream parlors and stands across the country in the 70s and 80s. Since it’s been so hard to find, many people have resorted to making their own from scratch versions.
Cinnamon
Whether it was conjoined with caramel or swirling on its own through the vast stretch of vanilla, cinnamon ice cream has become a thing of the past. This flavor was one of those treats that harkened back to the spicy, crunchy leaf season of the fall but in a cool and refreshing way. While there have been brands to make spin-offs of cinnamon ice cream (most famously Ben and Jerry’s cinnamon bun ice cream), the single stand-alone spice hasn’t been popular in recent years.
Butter Brickle
Butter Brickle shouldn’t be confused with its rival butter pecan. Originally a chocolate-coated toffee-like candy similar to a heath bar, this 1920s candy was soon made into an ice cream by Sioux-Falls, South Dakota ice cream company Fenn Bros Ice Cream and Candy Co. in the 1970s. The rights and formula for making butter brickle were sold to Leaf Inc., which manufactured them for Heath, which was then sold to Hershey’s in the 1990s. Nowadays, it is hard to find this ice cream flavor, but it’s out there in the Midwest ice cream parlor chain Braum’s, which serves several states.
Black Walnut
Like the cake mix and extracts of the mid-century, black walnut was a regional nut that graced the shelves of grocery stores for years. The flavor went beyond the baking aisle, and it was an ice cream flavor for decades. The unusual earthiness of the nut folded into a creamy vanilla base was in stark contrast to more colorful, kid-friendly flavors. While many brands had the ice cream flavor, it never made it beyond the Y2K mark, becoming an artifact of the 20th century.
Spumoni
Spumoni is an Italian classic, a trifecta of pistachio chocolate and cherry. It made a big splash on the East Coast and its urban ice cream parlors and spread across the country. Dreyer’s was one of the biggest ice cream manufacturers to run with the flavor, but the flavor hasn’t been produced in countless years. If you go to specialty Italian food stores or wander around Italian districts like in Manhattan or San Francisco, you can still stumble across the ice cream at local joints.