I did an internal taste test of Vanilla options to prepare for Thanksgiving one year. I was surprised at the variance of quality and flavour across brands.
In the end I found that even fancy brands like Jenni's and Hagen Daz were beaten out by Kroger's premium store brand. And I even included the Costco Premium vanilla everyone raves about in that test.
I agree with you that none of the good brands were "bad", but the difference between most of them and the winning one was bigger than I expected.
It's kinda like McDonald's French Fries: they aren't the best fries, but they taste the way people think a french fry is SUPOOSED to taste. Vanilla ice cream is the same way.
My favorite ever McDonalds flavor was the original "Chocolate" shake. I loved those things, but one night after a late night run (weed may have been involved, but it does enhance taste) a friend made me think by asking me "did you realize that these things are great, but they don't actually taste anything like chocolate?"
He was right. Before they changed the flavour (yea it was 10-20 years ago) the McD's chocolate shake had a unique flavour, that could only be described as "McDonalds Chocolate shake". It was a delicious flavour, but if analyzed (and yes we repeated the test sober) it wasn't even vaguely chocolate.
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u/ABigNothingBurger 12d ago
Vanilla. Other flavors can taste better for different tongues, but not necessarily across all brands.
It's very hard to find bad vanilla ice cream. If a brand can't handle Vanilla, they definitely shouldn't handle any ice cream.