The Old-School Ice Cream Flavor That's Still Super Popular In Jamaica

That people in Jamaica love ice cream is no surprise. After all, who doesn't love ice cream, especially when you're somewhere as warm and sunny as Jamaica? But along with chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, and other popular flavors, many Jamaicans can't get enough of one that you may have never heard of, but has a history spanning over a century. Grape-Nuts ice cream is a rarity in most of the United States, but the sweet, creamy-meets-crunchy treat, made by mixing Grape-Nuts cereal into vanilla ice cream, is still one of Jamaica's favorite flavors.

Grape-Nuts is one of America's oldest breakfast cereals, but is less common in recent years. However, in Jamaica, the cereal itself never caught on, but Grape-Nuts ice cream quickly became a staple, especially on Sundays ("ice cream day" in many Jamaican neighborhoods) when motorcyclists can be found selling ice cream. In fact, Jamaican-born food blogger Yanikie Tucker told Atlas Obscura that when she first came to the United States, it was a shock not to find pints of Grape-Nuts ice cream for sale at her local supermarket. Today, if you aren't lucky enough to be planning a trip to Jamaica, you might be able to find Grape-Nuts ice cream at some New England ice cream parlors, where it remains as a regional flavor, or you can make it at home yourself.

Before you can have Grape-Nuts ice cream, you need to have Grape-Nuts. And while this cereal has been available since the 19th century, it does not contain grapes or nuts, and never has. When Grape-Nuts was first produced in 1897, the cereal bore a resemblance to grape seeds, which were also known as grape "nuts" at the time, hence the name. Another story told is that the creator, C.W. Post, came up with the name by combining glucose, which he called "grape sugar," and the nuttiness of the cereal. Regardless, the name stuck and has persisted to this day. 

Like all breakfast cereals, Grape-Nuts is often served with milk (even though some disagree with the milk and cereal combination), paving the way for other dairy-based Grape-Nuts treats like ice cream. In fact, while Grape-Nuts ice cream may be hard to find in the United States today, it used to be so popular that Grape-Nuts advertisements included recipes to make the dessert. 

While the full history of Grape-Nuts as an ice cream flavor is hard to trace, one story claims that the flavor actually originated in Nova Scotia, Canada in 1919. Others speculate that it began as a simplified version of a different, more difficult-to-make, 20th-century ice cream flavor called bisque (no relation to lobster bisque, or the controversial oyster ice cream). However it started, and however it became so beloved in New England and Jamaica, lovers of Grape-Nuts ice cream praise how the cereal softens slightly in the creamy ice cream, without becoming soggy like it would in milk.