Guaranteed OT: Chocolate Milkshakes.

Re: Guaranteed OT: Chocolate Milkshakes.

ark

>What in your opinion is the difference between using vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup and chocolate ice cream? Is it the quality of the chocolate, the quality of the ice cream, the quality of the reminiscence, or something else? Just curious. In any case, the key to enjoyment may be acceptance.

Re: Guaranteed OT: Chocolate Milkshakes.

Lee Ohmart

>I can respond to that. Chocolate milkshakes need to be made with vanilla ice cream so you get an undertone of vanilla with the chocolate. And BTW, these should be properly made with real ice cream, not that carageenan loaded crap some ice cream producers have come up with. Otherwise, don't call it a milkshake. My father was a "jerk" back in the 40's. On countless occasions he would explain to me the proper method of making a soda. He taught me to make a milkshake, or frappes as he would call them (he was from Massachusetts) and they ALWAYS started with VANILLA ice cream.

Re: Even further OT and thread highjack

Rick Bos

>Speaking of pet peeves....

Rod,

I know you're a stickler for this sort of thing, but I have to point out a spelling error in your post. You've misspelled "wallah". I'm sure this spelling is correct as I have seen it "alot" all over the 'net.

Just trying to help out...

Re: Boy, this brings me back...

Glenn Madsen near San Francisco

>In high school, I needed a job to pay for the stuff I wanted to do, and to keep me out of trouble. The owner of the local good ice cream franchise needed someone to make his ice cream, and so he taught me how, and moved over to working on the other parts of trying to make an honest buck.

Shakes can be made however you want to make them. Folks have different goals when ordering whatever they order, and to be able to please as many folks as possible, at a profit, is how you try to get a business through.

Vanilla with chocolate syrup was one way, a popular one. Using one of the many varieties of chocolate ice creams was another. And my favorite was one using divinity fudge, a vanilla almond fudge laced ice cream and whole milk. NOT a low-cost method!

That was over forty years ago. I don't think I've had a good shake in the last 15 years, maybe more. I stopped looking, really.

Re: Even further OT and thread highjack

Dan Arrowsmith

>Chocolate ice cream usually has a little vanilla in it, to bring out the choc flavor. Choc ice cream is usually the dumping ground for all sorts of products. One rep I know wont eat choc ice cream for this reason.

Check my website—that's the #1 peeve.____

Rod Peterson -- Ormond Beach

>

Thank you!!________

Rod Peterson -- Ormond Beach

>

Thanks for the memories

Craig in Silverdale

>Back in the late 60's there was a great place just down the road from Springfield College, in Springfield, Mass. They had to have had the very best frappes. Thanks, haven't thought back to there in years.

Tastes completely different.

Rod Peterson -- Ormond Beach

>As Lee says below, the base of vanilla makes it different. In my view, chocolate ice cream based shakes taste richer (not in a good way)—almost screaming CHOCOLATE, whereas the chocolate taste in a vanila based (proper) shake is subtler.

No, I will give up chocolate shakes rather than accept an inferior version, however trendy (my suspicion as the reason for the sea change) it may be.

Rod

Heavenly Hash.

Rod Peterson -- Ormond Beach

>One of the brands local to where I lived once used that name (I don't think it's universal) to glamorize the dregs they threw together to squeeze that extra buck out of their leavings.

My poor unsuspecting mother bought it (because it was a bargain) and liked  it (probably because it was a bargain. I gave up trying to set her right.

Rod

Re: Tastes completely different.

Dennis Yoder

>Rod, When I was behind the soda fountain in the very early 60's, we had 2 kinds of chocolate milkshakes, regular and double chocolate. You can figure out the differences. The customer had to ask for the double choccolate to get chocolate ice cream and I mean ice cream. My personal favorite was the double chocolate malted with fudge sauce. Making me way to hungry. Dennis Y

Chocolate Malts too!

Jerry Nicholson

>55 years ago I thought the ultimate dinner was a cheeseburger, fries, and a chocolate malt with two straws. The flavors seemed to be superadditive. (The McD etc cheesburgers of today bear no resemblance to the cheeseburgers of the 50s.) In the last 30 years, I have found only one place that could make a REAL chocolate malt, a place called The Old Mill Tasty Shop in Wichita Kansas. This is an actual old drugstore with soda fountain. Last time I was there, the incompetent kid behind the counter screwed it up and made my malt with chocolate ice cream so that source of goodies has gone down the tubes too. I can only conclude that the real chocolate malt has now gone the way of the dodo bird. Then again, maybe it is only old f*rts like Rod and me that care.

Jerry

Never met a milkshake I didn't like!

Donald Pierson

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Re: Guaranteed OT: Chocolate Milkshakes.

Lee Gordon

>I don't understand what all the fuss is about. I grew up in northern New England and can state conclusively that a milkshake contains no ice cream at all. It's milk and syrup -- vanilla syrup for a vanilla shake and chocolate syrup for a chocolate shake. What you're talking about is a frappe (except in Rhode Island, where I believe they call it a "cabinet").

Of course, now that I live in southern New England, milkshakes do have ice cream in them. However, it has always been my understanding that a vanilla shake contained vanilla ice cream and vanilla syrup, a chocolate shake contained chocolate ice cream and chocolate syrup, and your favorite shake -- vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup -- is called a "Black and White."

My waistline is proof positive!

Donald Pierson

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My kids thank you!

ark

>For this to be considered scientific it needs to be repeatable among other things. In the name of science I volunteer to try and reproduce your finding tonight! :)

Re: Guaranteed OT: Chocolate Milkshakes.

Jay St. Peter - Southern MD

>I like them both ways. I really have gotten into basing my shake on mint chip ice cream AND having the guy add choc sauce. But, one thing I agree on is the difficulty of finding a place that makes GOOD shakes. Most of the local places here use Hersheys ice cream, which I find mediocre at best and not a good base for a shake. It's one of the things I most look forward to when going to San Diego on business.

I was settling on a weekly visit to Arbys as theirs seemed to be mildly acceptable for a fast food joint. But, I think they either changed their formula or the local one has machine problems ... not very good anymore.

Jay St. Peter

Okay, I'll concede…

Rod Peterson -- Ormond Beach

>…that there are regional differences in what I have always known as milkshakes (in three widely divergent geographical areas, by the way—Southwestern NY, South FLorida, and Chicagoland). I wouldn't care so much if I went into a New England ice cream parlor and didn't get a milkshake when I ordered a milkshake. That would be a one off occurrence that I could accommodate (and I'd have been watching them like a hawk, in any event).

However, the phenomenon I describe represents a major change in essentially the same locations where I was historically able to get the milkshake I expected when I ordered a milkshake. Substitute frappe (or your local area equivalent) and if they don't make a frappe today the way they made it when you were a mite, you'll be better able to understand my pique.

Anyway, Lee G., milk and chocolate syrup isn't a milk shake by any definition that I know of—that's chocolate milk, as can be seen in virtually any dairy case in English speaking North America, so far as I know.

Thanks for the responses, however. This has been fun (and may still be for a while).

Rod

P.S. Maybe it's time to reprise the thread on the proper way to install a roll of toilet paper. I don't think we've done that since BP days.

green river float is the best if you can get it

Joe Piotrowski - Chicago Burb's

>

And what about the extra???

Thomas Skaggs, Foothills of Mount Level

>Rod,

Another observation....it's been ages since I was served a milkshake, poured into a tall glass and given the steel mixer cup with the rest of the shake on the side. I used to love that.

T.

The answer is: McStuff

Mark Goodall - ATL - tooljunkie

>I'm not entirely sure when, but it was either just before I was a young kid, or while I was a young kid. I dunno exactly.

But a company, a restaurant chain to be exact, made a startling new discovery... they invented a substance they called: McStuff. I'm not sure if it was a joint venture between McDonalds and The Dow Chemical Company, or if was McDonalds by themselves, or what, but somebody invented McStuff and that changed food forever.

You see this McStuff is very inexpensive to produce and very versatile. I think they make it from crude oil, or perhaps coal, or perhaps it's made from the leftover sludge from Nuclear plants, I'm not sure which and believe it's d) all the above.

But ignoring what it actually comes from, it was discovered to be extremely versatile. It could be pressed through a small square grate and be made to look something like French cut fried potatoes (or French Fries). It can be plopped onto round disks resembling burgers and fried, it could be shaped into bars and called hash-browns, it could be pumped up with air to resembler hamburger buns, it could be thinned with waste-water and poured out to resemble pancakes, it could be frozen and pumped out to resemble milk shakes and could be frozen even futher to resemble ice cream.

Of course it was none of the things it was shaped to be, but they didn't stop finding new shapes of things to make from it.

Flavoring was a challenge, but with enough fat (trans or sans-trans as availability allowed) and Sodium-HypoChloride (later changed to Sodium-Chloride to futher reduce the cost) the taste could be masked or changed as necessary.

McDonalds discovered/invented this McStuff and it became a very effective way to make something (barely something) out of almost nothing.

But it didn't stop there. The discovered by accident that if they added too much air, the hamberger buns turned into stryofoam which became a very effective product ot make small boxes to carrying the "food" items to your table. McDonalds became famous for those styrofoam boxes they put the BigMac burger in. Very few people realized that the boxes and burgers were made from the exact same thing: McStuff.

It was later discovered that the styrofoam could be shaped into peanut forms and used for packing and a whole new industry: parcel shipping, was born. Today UPS and FedEx use almost as much McStuff for packing boxes as Americans eat at McDonalds restaurants.

That same McStuff, can be boiled down and condensed to be made into

liquid so that syrups and flavorings can be created.

Not long after they discovered that it could be used as an adhesive and used for making plywood, they discovered that they could leave out the plys of real wood altoghther and simply compress McStuff into woodlike materials, and thus MDF was born. Today nearly all the furniture bought in the United States is made of MDF instead of wood. And after you purchase this furniture, just as you leave Walmart, you can stop off at, where else? McDonalds and eat some more of this McStuff.

I hope this helps explain why you can't get a decent milkshake anymore.

Happy Woodworking!

Re: Chocolate Malts too!

Ernie Miller

>There is a place here in Topeka Called Bobo's that still knows how to make them right. they wven ask you if you want two or three scoops of malted in it made with real Vanilla Icream and a good chocklat syrup But it is served in a cardboard cup with a large bore straw so you can get at the goodies easily.

Over 40 years ago in my case since

Mike in Paradise

>I had anyone hand me the silver mixer to go with the shake. And we always used to go to that lunch counter cause they were the only ones to do that (And they made great burgers).

Funny no thickness related arguments!!!

My wife made vanilla shakes a couple of weeks ago one night and must be the first time that I had one in a year or so.

Ah, homemade shakes using real ice cream versus the Machine slop served many places these days base on softserve.

I can wax nostalgic w/ the best, BUT

Joanne Adler in Pt. Pleasant, PA

>as a True Chocoholic I feel it my duty to point out that there is no such thing as too much chocolate. Rod asserts that chocolate ice cream based shakes are "almost screaming CHOCOLATE"--the chocoholic's answer to this is "And that would be bad because??!!!"

However, I do support his point about the way things have changed. I actually like shakes either way and can taste the subtle difference. I must admit that I did thoroughly enjoy a Chocolate Stout Float last week that was made, in fact, with vanilla (that chocolate wannabe flavor) ice cream. Pretty darn tasty. But then, that may have been the Chocolate Stout. ;-)