Weiss won't discuss formulas or recipes, but there are some other obvious differences between Blue Bell and other commercial ice creams. A half gallon of Blue Bell weighs 52 ounces, while a half gallon of Dreyer's weighs 40 ounces, suggesting Blue Bell has less overrun. And Blue Bell's butterfat content is around 13 percent, only 1 percent short of super-premium level.
In 2006, Blue Bell sales topped $400 million. Although it is only distributed in 17 Southern states, Blue Bell is the No. 3-selling ice cream in the nation, behind the West Coast's Dreyer's and the East Coast's Breyers. Why don't they expand to national distribution?
Photo by Paul S. Howell
Rocky Road is one of Blue Bell's top ten flavors.
Photo by Paul S. Howell
Blue Bell's history is on display at the visitors' center — its first refrigerated delivery truck, from the 1930s, is parked in front of the entrance.
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"It's a cinch by the inch, but it's hard by the yard," is a favorite Kruse family saying. Ice cream quality deteriorates quickly if it isn't stored and transported very carefully — especially in a very hot climate. If it melts and refreezes, ice crystals ruin the texture. By maintaining tight control of every aspect of production, transportation and distribution, the Kruse family has kept the quality of Blue Bell exceptionally high. But such total control has made national distribution next to impossible.
The 100-year history of Blue Bell parallels the history of the ice cream business in the United States. A recent book called Ice Cream: The Delicious History by Marilyn Powell begins with the disclaimer that the history of ice cream is too complicated to sum up. People have been mixing snow and pulverized fruits, sweets and syrups since the Stone Age. Real ice cream emerged in Europe in the 1700s, but remained a rarity because it had to be made with ice cut from lakes and stored in icehouses through the summer.
The history of ice cream as we know it really begins in 1926, when the continuous freezer was invented. Blue Bell bought its first continuous freezer in 1936, the same year the company bought the first refrigerated delivery truck, the ones the kids like to climb on at the visitors' center. Ice cream ceased to be a novelty and became a part of everyday life during Prohibition, when the soda fountain replaced the tavern as a gathering place and ice cream sodas replaced alcoholic beverages.
Blue Bell started making ice cream two gallons at a time in 1911. Blue Bell Supreme emerged as the top brand of ice cream in this part of Texas in the 1950s, at about the same time that home freezers became common. The market for ice cream soared when home consumption became practical. In the 1960s, Blue Bell opened branch offices in Houston, using its own employees to drive route trucks and stock store freezers.
In 1969, Howard Kruse, a graduate of the dairy science program at Texas A&M and the son of Blue Bell's manager E.F. Kruse, came up with the formula for "Homemade Vanilla." It was intended to replicate the flavor of hand-cranked ice cream. It has remained the most popular flavor in the Blue Bell line for 40 years. Also in 1969, Blue Bell hired a Houston advertising genius named Lyle Metzdorf, who created the "best ice cream in the country" campaign. In the 1970s, Blue Bell expanded into the Dallas market.
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Houston has great ice cream. I feel guilty that I don't go out for ice cream more often. My enthusiasm for gelato remains strong, though I only visit a gelateria once a week at most. I occasionally get excited about an ultra-premium flavor or an enticing combination like the Chocolate Bar's chocolate and orange. But maybe I don't go out for ice cream as much as I might because the ice cream in my home freezer is so good. And that ice cream is usually Blue Bell.
True to his word, Bill Weiss brought us a tub of Homemade Vanilla straight from the freezer after the tour. It was soupy, but it tasted amazing. A Blue Bell customer once wrote a letter to the company confessing that she had filled an old-fashioned ice cream crank with the Blue Bell flavor and taken it to an ice cream social, where it was unanimously acclaimed the best homemade ice cream in town. It's easy to see why.
New York Times food writer R.W. Apple guessed that maple syrup was the secret ingredient that made Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla so distinctive. I thought the secret might be cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup, but the ingredient list on the package proved me wrong.
Weiss shared a surprising memory as we ate the "Homemade Vanilla." "We made homemade vanilla ice cream at home when I was a kid, and we used to dip saltines into the ice cream," he said. "Sometimes when I eat Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla at home, I still eat it with saltine crackers."
Of course, I bought a half gallon of Blue Bell "Homemade Vanilla" and a box of saltines and tried the combination at home. I liked it almost as much as Dutch Chocolate with pretzels.
robb@robbwalsh.com
