Least Popular Ice Cream Flavors

Maine’s obsession with lobster knows no bounds. Fans of the crustacean can now eat chunks mixed with butter-flavored ice cream at one Pine Tree State eatery.





HAGGIS
For anyone unfamiliar with the Scottish delicacy, haggis is traditionally made by stuffing a cow’s stomach with the heart, lung, and liver of a sheep, beef suet (fat), oatmeal, and other decidedly non-desserty ingredients. It’s hard to imagine what that would taste like as a frozen treat, but it has been done, created especially for a farm festival in—where else—Scotland.





SQUID INK
Squid ink (or sometimes cuttlefish ink) is used in a variety of Japanese dishes and provides a distinctive deep hue. Some claim they can hardly taste it—yes, even in sweet dishes like ice cream—while others say it adds a fishy flavor to foods both sweet and savory.





PROSCIUTTO
Move over, bacon: One San Francisco parlor thinks it’s prosciutto’s time to shine, specifically in non-traditional settings. Like your ice cream dish.





CICADA
One way to handle a loud insect invasion? Boil them, add brown sugar and milk, and turn them into ice cream. Just make sure you catch enough to freeze and save for later, because it may be another 13 years before they return.





PIG’S BLOOD
Outside of traditional dishes, such as black pudding and blood sausage, animal blood is generally discarded during food preparation. But recently, some chefs have been experimenting with other ways to turn the iron and protein-rich liquid into a useable ingredient. One food lab has even managed to use it as an egg substitute in ice cream and other dessert recipes, in the hopes of finding a culinary solution for people with egg allergies.





GRASS
One London-based kitchen chemist has experimented with using grass, hay, and pine needles as flavors for his liquid nitrogen-frozen ice creams. If you’re going to try this at home, you may want to add in a few traditional ice cream ingredients to make the overall experience a little sweeter.





CINNAMON RAMEN
Ramen has become incredibly trendy over the past couple years, but the Japanese dried noodles have been around for quite some time. One Baltimore shop decided to reinvent the Asian staple, chopping up noodles with cinnamon to create a one-of-a-kind ice cream flavor.





SORGHUM AND GRITS
Sorghum syrup is a sweetener made from the cane of sorghum, a tall grain plant, grown primarily across the Great Plains. One Kentucky-based chef decided to mix the syrup with grits (coarsely ground corn) and sugars to make an ice cream that we think qualifies as an acceptable breakfast food.





COW TONGUE
Sold as a novelty ice cream in Japan, cow tongue ice cream is exactly what you think it is. Keep in mind that the general rule is to not knock something until you’ve tried it, so we’re going to go ahead and bite our, well, tongues.





GRILLED EGGPLANT
You can always count on Japan to push the envelope. In addition to cow tongue ice cream, you can also sample grilled eggplant-flavored ice cream while you’re there.





Sichuan Pepper Chocolate
What happens when you mix a popular Chinese spice with a classic ice cream flavor? When Sweet Republic in Phoenix, Ariz., combined the two, the result was tingly and sweet with a kick of citrus, thanks to the added orange zest.





Wasabi
Here’s an unexpected mix. Luckily, there’s a whole lot of cold creaminess to counter that spicy burn.





Balsamic Strawberry
This fruit-and-dressing flavor is native to Bi Rite Creamery, a family-owned organic bakeshop in San Francisco. Though the idea of vinegar in your ice cream is at first off-putting, balsamic strawberry is one of the shop’s best-sellers. However, you’ll only be able to buy it during the spring and summer when the fruit is in-season.





Kimchi & Rice
This is a rare merger of flavors including hot pickled Korean vegetables and jasmine rice. For the month of June, Salt & Straw in Portland, Ore., made chocolate-covered kimchi and kimchi caramel sauce sweet enough for dessert to dress up this new ice cream.





Bone Marrow & Bourbon Smoked Cherries
Roasted bone marrow adds texture and smokiness to the cream, while cured and distilled cherries give it a sweet dimension. Look out for this flavor’s return to the shops September and see how you like it yourself.





Garlic
This pungent dessert got its exposure from being on the menu at a fittingly named restaurant, The Stinking Rose (topped with a caramel mole sauce) and at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Southern California.





Cereal Milk
Perfectly topped with tiny cornflakes, this unexpectedly delicious ice cream is available at momofuku milk bar, founded by Christina Tosi.





Matcha Mint: We feel relaxed just thinking about this blissful combo that’s typically reserved for our morning tea.





Buttered Popcorn Ice Cream: Imagine topping this off with caramel popcorn.





Vanilla Ice Cream With Olive Oil and Sea Salt: This is one vanilla ice cream that doesn’t require any additional toppings.





Pizza -- Another creation of Max & Mina's in Queens, this pizza-flavored ice cream is a blend of fresh tomato, garlic and mozzarella.





Sardines and Brandy -- There are a lot of weird ice cream flavors found in Japan, and this offering featuring sardines and brandy is definitely one of them.





Octopus -- Not content with wasabi and cactus, ice cream enthusiasts in Japan are going cuckoo over this octopus-flavored ice cream known as Taco Aisu.





Breast Milk -- Yes, you read that right. London ice cream shop The Icecreamists caused a stir when they started selling breast milk ice cream, entitled Baby Gaga. It used freshly-expressed breast milk donations from the public blended with Madagascan vanilla pods and lemon zest.





Coronation Chicken -- Initially created during the queen's Diamond Jubilee celebrations in England, this delicacy is a take on the coronation chicken dish invented for the queen's coronation banquet in 1953. It consists of cold chicken, curry cream and raisins in mayonnaise.





Horse Meat -- Well known for their love of raw fish a la sushi, the Japanese also love a relatively unknown delicacy known as Basashi, or raw horse meat. This ice cream not only tastes like horse, but contains chunks of horse flesh.





Salt and Pepper -- Offered by San Francisco ice cream shop Humphrey Slocombe.










Viagra -- The famed Heladería Coromoto ice cream shop in Mérida, Venezuela, produced this gem, made with secret ingredients rumored to be natural plant aphrodisiacs.