Vanilla is the most popular flavor of ice cream, making up about 30 percent of all ice cream sales. It accounts for about one-fourth of all sales at Baskin Robbin's. The next most popular flavor is, of course, chocolate, followed by butter pecan, strawberry and neapolitan.
More facts about ice cream:
- Americans consume more than a 1.5 billion gallons (about 5.7 billion liters) of ice cream a year. That's about 25 pounds (11 kg) of ice cream per American per year.
- The cities that buy the most ice cream per capita are Portland, Oregon; St. Louis, Missouri; and Seattle, Washington. The countries that consume the most ice cream (after the U.S.) are New Zealand, Denmark and Australia.
- Odd ice cream flavors from around the world include eggplant, silk, tulip, red wine, tomato and fried pork rind.
- Iced treats have been around since ancient times, but modern ice cream was invented in the early 1700s. Both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were known to be fans of ice cream.
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Discussion Comments
I'm not surprised that vanilla is the most popular flavor of ice cream, as it's my favorite flavor as well.
One thing I like about vanilla (in comparison to the other flavors) is that unlike chocolate and strawberry, which are very concentrated, you can add a lot more toppings without having to worry about ruining the taste.
For example, syrup and blueberries wouldn't work well on chocolate ice cream, but plain vanilla gives you a great excuse to load it up.
The third bullet point really caught my attention. Not that I would care to try any of those flavors, but where are they available? Are they real flavors, or are they meant to be "joke" flavors? Then again, people have different tastes, so what's not suitable for me, may be suitable for another person. Seriously though, silk and tulip flavor?
It's interesting to know that ice-related flavors have been around for quite some time. I wonder what flavors they had back then. People are always coming up with new ideas, and maybe they were still in the process of finding out what works and what doesn't.
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