U.S. At War: I’ll Take Vanilla

WPB asked ice-cream manufacturers hereafter to make no more than 20 varieties—ten flavors (manufacturer’s choice) in each of two grades. (WPB merely said “please,” issued no fiat.) Ice-cream novelties in the forms of bananas, daisies, ducks, rabbits, other flora & fauna were restricted to five varieties per month; ices and sherbets to two flavors per month. Purpose: to save containers, labor, transportation.

Since U.S. dairy cattle give down more than 100,000,000,000 pounds of milk a year, the U.S. has plenty of milk. But ice cream —childhood’s caviar, poor man’s pheasant, fat lady’s tempter —has the demerit of needing sugar as well as milk. There was no sign last week, however, that ice-cream output would be seriously curtailed. It just won’t be so fancy. Although some big, inventive ice-cream makers have been turning out a total of 28 flavors, ten seemed plenty.