While today’s freezers are packed with ice cream flavors such as cookies and cream, salted caramel and mint chocolate chip, some old-time favorites seem to have melted away.
Flavors including Butter Brickle, rum raisin and maple walnut were once familiar options at ice cream counters and grocery stores, but many have become harder to find as tastes have changed.
The food site Tasting Table recently looked back at a variety of nostalgic flavors that defined childhoods for many Americans. Here are five that might bring back some sweet memories.
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Butter Brickle ice cream was inspired by a butterscotch-flavored candy created in Omaha, Nebraska, in the 1920s, according to Tasting Table. Featuring a butterscotch flavor with crunchy toffee pieces, the ice cream had become a national favorite by the 1970s but is harder to find today.
In a Facebook group dedicated to memories of the 1970s, the flavor came up repeatedly as fans reminisced about its signature bits of crunchy toffee.
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Rum raisin ice cream dates back to the 1930s but surged in popularity in the 1970s, when the rum-soaked raisins and vanilla ice cream combo became widely available in shops and grocery stores. The flavor even made it to the White House, where President Richard Nixon reportedly served it for dessert.
Though it can still be found today, rum raisin has become harder to spot in many parts of the country. “I miss it so much! It’s my favorite ice cream flavor,” one Reddit user wrote in a subreddit dedicated to ice cream.
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Baskin-Robbins introduced its bright Pink Bubblegum ice cream in the 1970s, complete with small pieces of chewy bubblegum mixed into each scoop, Tasting Table reported. The unusual flavor became a childhood favorite for some and has occasionally been brought back by Baskin-Robbins for limited runs.
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“It was my favorite. I would eat the ice cream and save the bubblegum for later,” one Reddit user recalled.
Before it became an ice cream flavor, heavenly hash referred to another nostalgic oddity: a fruit salad made with ingredients such as whipped cream, marshmallows, candied fruit and nuts. Sealtest introduced its Heavenly Hash ice cream in 1969, combining marshmallows, almonds and chocolate chips for a treat similar to the Rocky Road we know today.
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The flavor later disappeared along with Sealtest’s ice cream line, but some fans still remember it fondly. “Now that was a great ice cream!” one Facebook user wrote.
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Maple ice cream has deep roots in the Northeast, appearing in some 19th-century cookbooks, and the addition of walnuts eventually made it a New England staple. Maple walnut, also known as maplenut, was much easier to find in the 1970s but has since faded from many ice cream aisles and shops.
“My grandmother loved the Maple Walnut flavor. I don’t think I’ve seen it since I was a kid,” one Reddit user recalled.
