The Enduring Midwestern Mystery of Blue Moon Ice Cream

September 6, 2021 10:16 AM

Native to the Midwestern United States and little known elsewhere, Blue Moon’s flavor dances on the tip of your tongue, taunting you into another guess, at turns familiar and elusive. It’s bright, mildly citrusy, and almost fruity, but not in a cloying way. It’s the aftertaste in particular that is, frankly, somewhat infuriating, a flavor layer that seems to say, “you know what this is,” but you don’t—and in fact, very few people do.
posted by ShooBoo (48 comments total)

I believe the regional Canadian version of this is Atlantic Canada's Moon Mist flavour?
posted by Kitteh at 10:19 AM on September 6, 2021 [2 favorites]

hunting for Blue Moon’s provenance is a fruitless goose chase

So we at least know there's no fruit or goose flavors in it...
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:23 AM on September 6, 2021 [7 favorites]

I think I'm in the Blue Moon Core Area, but people are generally more excited about "Superman" ice cream here. With that stuff around, I've never even noticed Blue Moon.
posted by LionIndex at 10:41 AM on September 6, 2021 [5 favorites]

It's flavor enhancer 238 and Dow will send you a barrel of it if you have the right hazmat licenses.
posted by adept256 at 10:49 AM on September 6, 2021 [4 favorites]

Elsewhere in vaguely mysterious blue ice cream flavorings, Australia’s Blue Heaven topping.
posted by zamboni at 10:49 AM on September 6, 2021 [4 favorites]

Is it ambergris!?
posted by Stonestock Relentless at 10:53 AM on September 6, 2021 [54 favorites]

Is this similar to "huckleberry" flavored ice cream which you can find all over the mountain states but tastes nothing like the huckleberries which grow out here in Puget Sound? A perfectly lovely ice cream flavor but I still have no idea if it's based on anything "natural".
posted by maxwelton at 10:57 AM on September 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

I always assumed it was orange vanilla and the aftertaste was from the blue food coloring.
posted by Tesseractive at 10:57 AM on September 6, 2021

In Italy this colour ice cream was marketed as Puffo, which is what Italians call Smurfs, as an explicitly artificial/synthetic flavour, and really only for kids. No one here would have even thought about figuring out the actual ingredients: the whole point was that you were licking something unreal...
posted by progosk at 11:11 AM on September 6, 2021 [3 favorites]

I know nothing about this, so I'm guessing it's....purple flavor? Or maybe, not purple?
posted by winesong at 11:44 AM on September 6, 2021

I think I'm in the Blue Moon Core Area, but people are generally more excited about "Superman" ice cream here. With that stuff around, I've never even noticed Blue Moon.

The article claims that Blue Moon is part of Superman.
posted by one for the books at 11:59 AM on September 6, 2021 [2 favorites]

I always thought pistachio flavor had something to with it.
posted by newpotato at 12:01 PM on September 6, 2021

Everyone knows it's just fruit loops milk.
posted by symbioid at 12:16 PM on September 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

There's an Italian flavoring called millefiori which is a sort of vague citrus/vanilla/floral/??? composite. The bottle I have (mostly for desserts) makes me think of Froot Loops and it probably combines well with Thai lime. I wonder if it's similar to Blue Moon.

*I've used it with fresh jalapenos in strange concoctions and it is surprisingly good in an undefinable way.
posted by oneirodynia at 12:25 PM on September 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

I've lived in supposed BM territory (Indiana) all my life and I have never seen Blue Moon ice cream. I think this is like one of those stories that proclaim Sugar Cream Pie as Indiana's favorite dessert, when you'd be extremely hard pressed to find it on a menu anywhere.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:28 PM on September 6, 2021 [4 favorites]

I really doubt a small midwestern company was using k-lime in their flavoring mix in the 1930s. Cardamom, that I can see, plenty of Scandinavian immigrants around.
posted by tavella at 12:33 PM on September 6, 2021

...hunting for Blue Moon’s provenance is a fruitless goose chase...
So we at least know there's no fruit or goose flavors in it...

It's made of fruitless goose.
posted by zengargoyle at 12:37 PM on September 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

But not gooseberry.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:53 PM on September 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

Is k-lime different than key lime?
posted by The otter lady at 1:14 PM on September 6, 2021

Yes, it's a different plant; the original name contained an ethnic slur.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:22 PM on September 6, 2021 [2 favorites]

Which I was today years old when I found that out (via the comment about halfway through the linked FPP article). I've often heard the original name used elsewhere without any mention of it being offensive.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:27 PM on September 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

(I thought it was going by makrut lime these days?)

I’ve been a blue moon fan since childhood. My favorite ones are much more almond-forward. I had a very fruit-loopy one recently and was not impressed. Basically no one can agree on what exactly the flavor is, so we can endlessly argue about it, which is a perfect ice cream flavor in my opinion. Plus the color! It’s gorgeous.

A couple years back I got ice cream with an East-coast raised friend and he got Superman and I thought nothing of it, since I’ll get Blue Moon often enough, if it’s there. His mind was BLOWN, he was like, “I’ve never seen ice cream so colorful! It’s so weird!” And then MY mind was blown, because who DIDN’T grow up alternating between Blue Moon and Superman on trips to the ice cream shop as a kid? We live in a varied and wonderful world ✨
posted by jeweled accumulation at 1:32 PM on September 6, 2021

Thorzdad, the residents of Winchester IN and environs would beg to differ....
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 1:42 PM on September 6, 2021

what Italians call Smurfs, as an explicitly artificial/synthetic flavour, and really only for kids
Yes! Having never eaten ice cream in the Midwest I was unfamiliar with this flavor but my thoughts immediately turned to the weird Smurf ice cream my daughter used to love in Italian-influenced southern France.
posted by St. Oops at 2:07 PM on September 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

Is this similar to "huckleberry" flavored ice cream which you can find all over the mountain states but tastes nothing like the huckleberries which grow out here in Puget Sound?

There are several species referred to as "huckleberries". The only one I'm aware of that would grow in the Puget Sound is the red huckleberry, Vaccinium parvifolium, which is prolific in lower elevation, wet areas of the PNW. ​The species that is used in ice cream is usually mountain huckleberry or black huckleberry, Vaccinium membranaceum. Those grow in the mountains throughout the West. The best ones, however, are the Cascade bilberry, Vaccinium deliciosum, which is native to the Cascades. It literally has "delicious" in the name. The good huckleberry fields in the area usually have these.

There's also Dwarf bilberry (decent), Oval-leaf blueberry (edible, but meh), and Alaska blueberry or bog blueberry (astringent and full of seeds).

Source: I've been picking huckleberries for several years now, and have done my research. I also picked over a gallon yesterday in a nameless part of the Gifford Pinchot NF. It's a bumper crop this year.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 2:24 PM on September 6, 2021 [6 favorites]

the weird Smurf ice cream my daughter used to love in Italian-influenced southern France

where they would have called it “schtroumpf” - and probably not used bananas and spirulina like these renegade hipster glaciers…
posted by progosk at 2:37 PM on September 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

The best ones, however, are the Cascade bilberry, Vaccinium deliciosum, which is native to the Cascades. It literally has "delicious" in the name.

Well, so does the Red Delicious apple, and look how that turned out.
posted by lhauser at 2:45 PM on September 6, 2021 [10 favorites]

I grew up in NJ and went to college in Michigan at a school where 80% of the students were from Michigan and it just friend in a 4 years of “you haven’t heard of [insert thing here]” which included Superman ice-cream, bottle deposits, Meijer, and Vernors amount other things
posted by raccoon409 at 4:27 PM on September 6, 2021 [4 favorites]

I've lived in supposed BM territory (Indiana) all my life and I have never seen Blue Moon ice cream. I think this is like one of those stories that proclaim Sugar Cream Pie as Indiana's favorite dessert, when you'd be extremely hard pressed to find it on a menu anywhere.

That’s because it’s an awful dessert. Persimmon Pudding is where it’s at so far as Indiana desserts go.
posted by leotrotsky at 4:36 PM on September 6, 2021

Mmmm! Obscure ice cream is my thing.
Atlas obscura also covered Canada’s tiger tail
posted by St. Peepsburg at 4:41 PM on September 6, 2021 [3 favorites]

Oh, weird. My only encounter with blue ice cream was a tiny ice cream shop in rural NE Pennsylvania back in the 90s. They had a flavor called "Smurf" which was blue ice cream with mini-marshmallows in it. The flavor was hard to pin down, and now I'm wondering if it was some relative of this.
posted by Zargon X at 4:46 PM on September 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

I have a vivid memory of once throwing up shortly after eating Superman ice cream. A very colorful memory.
posted by praemunire at 4:50 PM on September 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

Oh, I love Tiger Tail ice cream! It is much harder to find nowadays though. Usually you have to go to a small town ice cream place to gat it. Never been to Blue Moon country tho.
posted by fimbulvetr at 4:55 PM on September 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

Hmm. Ohio is apparently far enough outside the BMCA that I've never encountered Blue Moon. OTOH I spent the 70's & 80's in southern Florida, and I would swear Superman ice cream was common in chains like Friendly's and Baskin Robbins, and in grocery stores. Maybe a regional transplant thing, where all the Midwestern snowbirds and expatriates created a market for it outside the usual area?

Looks like some of my local ice cream makers will at least occasionally do their versions of Blue Moon, maybe I'll give it a shot one of these days.
posted by soundguy99 at 7:31 PM on September 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

Meijer!!!

Oh man, I miss Meijer! Yes, of all things... *smiles, unabashed*. It's been years and that's still something I've never found an equivalent for. Wal-Mart: not the same. No. Nope.

I still slip up and call it pop now and then, even though I've been living among soda-drinkers for years.

Blue Moon ice cream, though? I don't even remember it. Superman ice cream - yep. That pink ice cream with pieces of bubble gum in it? That too. Blue Moon? Must've been in the wrong part of the state or something.
posted by Armed Only With Hubris at 8:58 PM on September 6, 2021

jeni's (based in OH) had a violet and vanilla supermoon a few years ago.
posted by brujita at 9:30 PM on September 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

OK. Pre 1970, there was an ice cream parlor attached to and accessible from a bowling alley in Finneytown, a suburb of Cincinnati. I always preferred a chocolate, chocolate chip, double chocolate chip or mint chocolate chip, preferably from Graeters. But my best friend at the time, DP, liked blue moon. And the day after the girl scout bowling field trip, when I was over at her house two doors down from mine, she called me VERY EXCITED to her bathroom to show me the technicolor output roughly 24 hours after ingesting a double scoop of blue moon. Let's just say that the dye that produced a neon blue frozen treat was apparently not fully digestible.
posted by rekrap at 10:51 PM on September 6, 2021

[...] to her bathroom to show me the technicolor output roughly 24 hours after ingesting a double scoop of blue moon [...]
posted by rekrap at 7:51 PM on September 6 [+] [!]

epoonysterical
posted by progosk at 1:19 AM on September 7, 2021 [3 favorites]

Used to eat Tiger Tail on the reg as a kid (Hamilton Ontario).

When I was in my early 20's I was driving E/W for a job in Calgary and we happened to overnight in marquette michigan, and the ice cream stand on the town square had "moose tracks" which was chunks of peanut butter cup in vanilla. Sounds super common now and there are lots of variations of this around it seems to me, but at the time my mind was blown. Only time as an adult I ate an ice cream cone and went back immediately to eat a second one.

[maron]Wow, Ben and Jerry's has been up to some shit, huh?[/maron]
posted by hearthpig at 5:21 AM on September 7, 2021 [1 favorite]

Meijer!!!

Oh man, I miss Meijer!

That's *Meijer's*.
posted by Preserver at 7:46 AM on September 7, 2021 [2 favorites]

I've lived in Indiana my whole life and never had Blue Moon or Superman, but I did have a fantastic piece of sugar cream pie in Bloomington a couple weeks ago!
posted by headspace at 12:03 PM on September 7, 2021 [1 favorite]

When I was in my early 20's I was driving E/W for a job in Calgary and we happened to overnight in marquette michigan, and the ice cream stand on the town square had "moose tracks" which was chunks of peanut butter cup in vanilla. Sounds super common now and there are lots of variations of this around it seems to me, but at the time my mind was blown

it was Jilbert's ice cream and Dean foods bought them out. I believe a very small amount of ice cream (including moose tracks with legit peanut butter cups--I was always disappointed by other brands' moose tracks--and killer Mackinac Island Fudge varieties) is still made on-site at the original store, but that may have changed.

The Dean Foods product is not even a little the same.
posted by Laetiporus at 4:50 PM on September 7, 2021 [1 favorite]

This Blue Moon story has revived my dream of finding a can of Tiger's Milk protein drink powder from the 1970s that is somehow still edible and have it reverse-engineered by a food scientist. I miss that drink.
posted by technodelic at 5:36 PM on September 7, 2021 [1 favorite]

The Village Creamery, the neighborhood place where I would have had Blue Moon most often when I was growing up in a small town in west Michigan is long gone; I don't even think the building remains.

But I am pleased to discover, via the internet, that Jones' Homemade Ice Cream in Baldwin is still in business and still serving Blue Moon - when I was a child that was a much anticipated stop whenever our travels took us within a county or so.

I hope it's still as good as I remember from my childhood but rather doubt that it could be - ice cream and I have both changed considerably in the intervening decades. Still, good to know that if I find myself driving through that part of the state again (unlikely, as I currently live very far away) that I could stop if I chose.
posted by Nerd of the North at 6:24 PM on September 7, 2021

Never had this Blue Moon and I'd like to try it but this reminds me of a glorious ice cream my parents bought in the early 1960s, a brick of three-flavor Neopolitan but since it was the Fourth of July the flavors weren't Chocolate-Vanilla-Strawberry but instead, a patriotic red-white&blue Strawberry-Vanilla-Blueberry, and there wasn't much in my serving but I still remember that Blueberry, the best ice cream flavor ever, blue with dark flecks of blueberry skin pieces. So yummy, and one time only, never again.
posted by Rash at 8:07 PM on September 7, 2021 [2 favorites]

dang, now I seriously want some blueberry ice cream!
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:34 PM on September 7, 2021

I can confirm I've had this all over Wisconsin growing up and the article is spot on... it's a beautiful enigma... one I am now craving having lived on the East Coast for 25 years...
posted by Capricorn13 at 12:16 PM on September 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

I remember eating blue moon ice cream in Indiana in the mid 70's at an old fashion soda fountain place/diner that was part of Bosma's Dairy. It's the only place I've ever seen it. I remember it having a mild berry flavor with a hint of lemon.

If any of you Hoosiers want to try it, Handel's in Fishers (NE side of Indy) has it on the menu but they list it as blue raspberry flavor so it might not be the same stuff.
posted by stray thoughts at 10:32 PM on September 8, 2021 [1 favorite]