Rejuvenated

I prefer Diet Coke with Vanilla Ice Cream whenever I'm making mines. What's yours'?

nerd

Diet Coke is fine, but in a float? That is some nasty shitt.

I prefer an Oatmeal Stout. Delicious, even with plain vanilla.

Flahusky

Homemade root-beer and Bryers French Vanilla.

GadgetFreak

Hmmmm. I haven't had one in years. Make that decades; but Vernors and vanilla ice cream. Oh. I may have to order some Vernors now.

gfunkdave

Goose Island root beer and Ben & Jerrys vanilla ice cream.

greggwiggins

A good Vanilla ice cream (Ben & Jerry's is a possibility) and Young's Double Chocolate Stout.

mbstone

This.

The secret to making a float is to first put a tiny bit of soda in the bottom of a tall soda glass, add a tiny bit of ice cream, and mix thoroughly. Then add ice cream and soda. The soda will have a slightly enhanced ice cream flavor which is what you want.

obscure2k

That sounds so good. If you add Fox's U Bet, will you then have an Egg Cream?

mbstone

As I'm sure you know, a proper egg cream is made of U-Bet chocolate syrup, grade A cream, and seltzer. ("A-cream" was the original ingredient, at some point someone misheard this as "egg cream" and the name stuck. There are no egg products in an egg cream.)

Since seltzer is relatively hard to find, I will forgive you for using club soda. In our health-conscious age it is also OK to substitute whole or lowfat milk for A-cream.

As to my recommendation that a small amount of ice cream should be briskly stirred into a small amount of soda when making an ice cream soda or float, a mixture of milk, club soda and U-Bet syrup should require little effort to mix.
.

TMOliver

When I read that (and because of part of my youth behind a drugstore "soda fountain" counter), "Ice Cream Soda" comes to mind, Special heavy tall conical fluted soda glass, flavoring, a bit of vanilla ice cream, a shot of carbonated water (under pressure - not bottled Club Soda, Seltzer, etc.) stir, add more carbonated water, a a dip or two of vanilla atop, then whipped cream and a cherry.

A Float: These days, Dr. Pepper and Blue Bell Homestyle Vanilla, not mix, just floated.** Long ago, XXX Root Beer (Draught) or maybe A&W, Vanilla Ice Cream floated in the mug.

** Best enjoyed at the soda fountain in the Dr. Pepper Museum, South 5th near IH35, in Waco, Texas, the birthplace of Dr. Pepper which claims to be the country's oldest "branded" soft drink. The museum also sells Dublin, TX bottled "Cane Sugar" Dr. Pepper in small bottles, a rare claret among everyday jug wines

Then you get to the esoteric remedies like "Banana Egg Malt".

Silver Fox

Whatever they use to make Butter Beer in Harry Potter's Wizarding World in Orlando !

violist

I can't believe that "A cream" explanation - too contrived.

The best floats I've had:
strawberry Coke (my late sister discovered this)
vanilla A&W root beer.

There used to be a place in Cambridge, Mass. that
made vanilla red wine floats that were pretty good.

GadgetFreak

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Many years ago my wife and I were stranded in Waco for a few days waiting on GM to ship a part to fix our car. I had no idea that was there .

mbstone

Think of it as it would be pronounced by a native Yiddish speaker: "Acchream." The "ch" is a guttural sound made with the back of the throat, as in "L'Chaim."

violist

What I can't wrap my head around is anyone describing
the thing using the term "Grade A cream" in the first place.
Too verbose and too convenient for guesswork etymologists.

To me there's a bad odor about it, the same as with a
"rarebit."