Eddie Rockets does a milkshake that has ice-cream in but the flavouring is quite artificial. The only time I had a really good milkshake was in a small place that did it's own ice-cream and is now sadly closed.
I was going to recommend a little restaurant. Serve up proper milkshakes, good hamburgers, chocolate chip cookies, and all that. Then I remembered that all that work would subtract from writing time....
You take ice cream. You take milk. (In an ideal world, you take vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup and milk, rather than chocolate ice cream and milk.) You blend them together and you have a tasty treat.
Have you ever gone in somewhere, given them this description, and asked if they could make you one?
I mean, people do that in bars with drink orders all the time. No reason you shouldn't be able to at least /try/ to do that with a milkshake.
Ah now, see, I grew up loving milk in all its forms, and yet I never loved the milkshake; and you may - finally, at this too-late stage in my life! - have put your finger on why, because no, in this country the milkshake has never had any connection with ice cream. The ones I tried - 'way 'way back, when I was a smallish thing - were composed of milk and flavouring and some sort of thickening, and nasty.
These days, alas, ice cream wouldn't do it for me either (I've gone all foodie, and refuse to eat it, mostly), but I can see how it would have made a major difference when I was a kid. 'Til now, this very moment, it had never occurred to me that the US fondness for these vile things was actually an instance of the same word carrying two meanings, so thank you for that. George Bernard Shaw would've been quicker.
If commercial British ice cream is of the same general quality as commercial Irish ice cream, I'd go off it too (in fact I have, and thus instead spend €6.69 on Haagen-Dazs or Ben & Jerry's, which is like TEN DOLLARS A PINT FOR GOD'S SAKE). It's terrible.
It is. It always has been. There are of course good ones available these days, or one can make one's own; I still tend to avoid 'em. Anything that cold, you lose all the subtleties of flavour, the grace-notes that make taste interesting. Same is true of piping-hot food. Closest to room- or body-temperature, the more the flavours are available. Quoth the foodie, ever more...
See, I'd disagree on the cold end (hot you just can't eat, there's no point). In my experience the thing that's critical on the cold end of the spectrum is there's simply a very limited number of bites you get before your mouth goes cold and you can't, in fact, taste the subtleties. For true flavor impact ice cream probably shouldn't be served in more than half-cup servings, and probably a quarter to a third is really optimum for enjoying the flavor.
Which doesn't, mind you, stop me from *eating* it a pint at a time....
In fact, growing up in New England, there was always a definite difference between a Milk Shake and a Frappe (or, the best of the bunch, a Fribble from Friendly's).
A lot of the time, even in New England, you get the whole ice cream thing, but sometimes you get flavored, whipped, milk.
I tend to forget that, having been away for so long.
Ah, good, I was going to post the same thing, and I'm glad someone else shared it! :) (shofixti educated me on the nuances of the milkshake vs. frappe thing. Me, it just makes me appreciate regional differences.)
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Have you ever gone in somewhere, given them this description, and asked if they could make you one?
I mean, people do that in bars with drink orders all the time. No reason you shouldn't be able to at least /try/ to do that with a milkshake.
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These days, alas, ice cream wouldn't do it for me either (I've gone all foodie, and refuse to eat it, mostly), but I can see how it would have made a major difference when I was a kid. 'Til now, this very moment, it had never occurred to me that the US fondness for these vile things was actually an instance of the same word carrying two meanings, so thank you for that. George Bernard Shaw would've been quicker.
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Which doesn't, mind you, stop me from *eating* it a pint at a time....
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A lot of the time, even in New England, you get the whole ice cream thing, but sometimes you get flavored, whipped, milk.
I tend to forget that, having been away for so long.
And now I'm really craving a Fribble.
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