Food & Drink
Ice Cream Tier List Maker
Rank ice cream flavors from vanilla and chocolate to mint chocolate chip and cookie dough.
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Drag items into a tier — or tap an item, then tap a tier.
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Meet every flavor (19)
These 19 flavors load into the maker above. Each write-up covers what the flavor is and what to weigh when you rank it. Facts were last checked on .
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Vanilla
Flavored with vanilla beans, extract or synthetic vanillin. The type of vanilla varies by location, with smoky flavors common in North America and Europe, while Ireland more often uses an anise-like flavor.
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Chocolate
Made with natural or artificial chocolate flavoring. It is one of the oldest ice cream flavors and one of the world's most popular, and it also serves as a base for many other flavors.
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Strawberry
Made by blending fresh strawberries or flavoring with the eggs, cream, vanilla and sugar used in ice cream. Most strawberry ice cream is colored pink or light red.
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Mint Chocolate Chip
Mint ice cream with small chocolate chips. Most versions use peppermint or spearmint flavoring, sometimes with crème de menthe, and green food coloring is often added.
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Cookies and Cream
A variety with chocolate sandwich cookie crumbles, most popularly Nabisco's Oreo under a licensing agreement. It also appears in milkshakes and other desserts.
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Cookie Dough
Uses edible cookie dough, which is made without eggs and with heat-treated flour so it is safe to eat raw. Regular dough meant for baking is not designed for that.
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Rocky Road
A chocolate-flavored ice cream that traditionally comes with nuts and whole or diced marshmallows. There are many variations from the original flavor.
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Butter Pecan
Smooth vanilla ice cream with a slight buttery flavor and pecans, prominent in the southern United States. The flavor is also an element of soul food, the cuisine of Black Americans.
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Neapolitan
Three flavors side by side, typically vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, sometimes called Harlequin. It is associated with Naples, Italy, but was first recorded in Prussia in 1839.
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Coffee
An ice cream flavor made with coffee or coffee flavoring. Wikipedia gives it only a brief entry, so no single origin story is documented.
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Pistachio
Made with pistachio nuts or flavoring and often distinctively green. It is also a layer in spumoni, and in Damascus, Syria, the Bakdash makes a pounded pistachio-covered ice cream called Booza.
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Rainbow Sherbet
Sherbet is made from water, sugar, a dairy product and flavoring, usually fruit. It has only 1 to 2 percent milkfat, much less than ice cream, and differs from sorbet, which has no dairy.
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Birthday Cake
A cake-flavored ice cream flavor. The idea shows up in other treats too, such as the limited-edition Birthday Cake Oreo sold from February to July 2012 for the 100th birthday of the cookie.
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Salted Caramel
Caramel is made by slowly heating sugars to about 170 degrees Celsius, and is used as a topping for ice cream. In salted caramel ice cream that sweetness is paired with salt.
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Moose Tracks
A branded flavor owned by Denali Flavors and made by different companies. The original is vanilla ice cream with peanut butter cups and fudge, and there are chocolate, mint and brownie versions.
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Cotton Candy
Based on the spun sugar confection, which is made by heating sugar and spinning it through tiny holes so it cools into fine strands. Cotton candy is also called candy floss or fairy floss.
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Mango
Uses the mango, a stone fruit from the tropical tree Mangifera indica, which originated in northeastern South Asia. Hundreds of cultivars exist worldwide, so mango ice cream can vary a lot.
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Matcha
Uses matcha, a finely ground powder of shade-grown green tea. The shade growing gives it a characteristic bright green color and strong umami flavor.
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Dulce de Leche
Dulce de leche is a confection made by heating sugar and milk for several hours. It becomes spreadable and sauce-like, with a rich flavor and color from non-enzymatic browning.
Ice Cream tier list questions
What is the difference between ice cream, sherbet and sorbet?
Ice cream is made from milk or cream. Sherbet contains a smaller amount of dairy, with 1 to 2 percent milkfat, while sorbet is made from ice with fruit juice or purée and contains no dairy.
What is Neapolitan ice cream?
It is three flavors side by side, typically vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. Despite the name linking it to Naples, Italy, it was first recorded in Prussia in 1839.
How should I rank ice cream flavors?
Common criteria include flavor, texture, mix-ins and how well a flavor works on its own or with toppings. You can also compare plain flavors and mix-in flavors separately, as they do different jobs.
Sources
Facts on this page were checked against these references on .