The Breakfast Staple Audrey Hepburn Loved To Drizzle Over Ice Cream

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Audrey Hepburn was an iconic star who dripped class from head to toe, and although she's best known for her illustrious acting career and humanitarian efforts, she was also a great food lover. When Hepburn died of cancer in 1993, one of her sons, Luca Dotti, found a journal she kept with recipes in it, inspiring him to compile a collection he called, "Audrey at Home: Memories of My Mother's Kitchen." The book detailed Hepburn's approach to food, which was just as demure as you might expect. According to the biography, while she didn't do much snacking and seldomly ate sweets, one thing she did love to indulge in was ice cream — vanilla, in particular. While hot fudge sauce, melty peanut butter, or strawberry syrup are all traditional toppings for classic vanilla ice cream, Hepburn preferred a sauce that is usually drizzled over pancakes and waffles — maple syrup.

Could there be a more underrated ice cream topping? Caramel and toffee flavors with subtle notes of sweet vanilla perfectly complement the rich and creamy taste of the best vanilla ice cream. This combination was particularly unique for Hepburn to have discovered, considering she spent the majority of her life residing in European countries where maple syrup wasn't as readily available as it was in North America. How she came to love maple syrup as an ice cream topping is unknown, but perhaps it stemmed from her modest desire for simple, quality ingredients — and her disdain for fancy or extravagant food.

The foods we grow up eating can often influence our food choices as adults. Audrey Hepburn grew up under Nazi occupation in the Netherlands during World War II, where she became severely malnourished. This experience is believed to have perpetuated her profound appreciation for foods that nourish both the body and the soul. According to her biography, "Audrey Hepburn, An Elegant Spirit," written by her other son, Sean Hepburn Ferrer, she ate a variety of foods from each food group, limited her meat intake, and always filled her plate with colorful foods. According to Ferrer, Hepburn claimed, "It isn't very interesting to eat a plate full of white, therefore it can't be very good for you either." Hepburn held this intuitive food philosophy well before research proved that eating the rainbow supported good health.

Hepburn's daily ritual was a square of baking chocolate, which she believed boosted her mood, and probably wasn't a low-quality chocolate bar. This habit was likely inherited from her experience surviving famine when a soldier gifted her chocolate. During her time in Italy filming "Roman Holiday," she developed a special affinity for Italian cuisine, particularly pasta. She reportedly enjoyed eating pasta every day, and once a week, she would whip up her favorite pasta dish, spaghetti al pomodoro (spaghetti with tomato sauce). I can only imagine the delightful dessert that followed — vanilla ice cream with maple syrup drizzled on top.