Perry's Ice Cream
1 Ice Cream Plaza, Akron, NY 14001
Web: Perry's Ice Cream
Phone: 716.542.5492
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Akron Favorites Ice Cream

"After laying out Edy's and Perry's cartons side-by-side and giving them both a full sampling, we found that the results weren't at all what we'd expected."

When the leaves turn red, we develop pumpkin cravings, and when the air chills just a little bit more, egg nog, gingerbread, and candy canes are high on our seasonal snack lists. For years, one of our favorite holiday season treats has been peppermint ice cream, a seasonal and somewhat rare flavor that comes in two variations: a more common smooth version and the comparatively scarce, better chunky alternative, which Akron, N.Y.-based Perry's sells under the name Peppermint Stick. The chunky kind mixes pink-colored, mint-flavored ice cream with pieces of red and green candy cane, a recipe that has beguiled our tongues far beyond the winters it's been available. Last year, we hunted for it without success, but this week, we finally had the chance to compare Perry's version against another competitor: the Nestle-owned Edy's Limited Edition Peppermint Ice Cream, sold in half of the country under the Dreyer's brand name.

It's worth mentioning that this comparison never would have happened if Perry's version had been in stores as expected: the company has been billing Peppermint Stick as an "October through December" Limited Edition, but we could find no trace of it around here last December, nor throughout almost the entire month of October this year. Is it just insanely popular? We're guessing not. In the midst of the nearly three weeks we spent digging through ice cream freezers at several local Tops and Wegmans stores for Peppermint Stick, we asked employees whether we'd missed prior shipments, and were told that it just hadn't come in yet.

During those searches, we came across Edy's Peppermint Ice Cream - offered, the company's web site notes, from September to December - and decided to give it a shot while we were waiting. Our expectations were low: most of the other non-Perry's versions we've tried over the years have been either soft, lightly minty ice cream with no candy, or hard, stronger minted versions with really small or melted candy chunks. So we were surprised and pleased to find plenty of candy chunks in the Edy's carton, and a minty ice cream that wasn't fantastically strong, but wasn't bad, either. After a few days, the candy in Edy's was bleeding red into the ice cream, but that's par for the course with the apparently challenging suspension of the cane chunks in a milky base. There was plenty of room for Perry's to do better, assuming it ever showed up in stores, but we decided that Edy's would do in a pinch.

When we heard this week that Peppermint Stick was in stock, we excitedly grabbed a carton to sample as soon as our schedules permitted. But after laying out Edy's and Perry's cartons side-by-side, using separate spoons to scoop them into identical ice cream dishes, and giving them both a full sampling, we found that the results weren't at all what we'd expected. As we recalled from past servings, Perry's ice cream was creamier than Edy's. But it was also a little weaker in mint flavor, and its once mighty candy cane chips had shrunk into tiny slivers - still both green and red, but barely visible, and really not worth calling candy at their size. Digging deeper into the carton revealed larger pieces near the bottom, but Edy's chunks were bigger and better, and we preferred the stronger taste of mint. Thus, if we had to pick one, we'd go with Edy's; the Perry's version looked mostly like what we remembered, but the taste and texture just weren't up to old standards… and we have a pretty good memory for those things.

Obviously, peppermint ice cream is a niche flavor, and easy enough to write off on its own - if that one's not good, some might say, find another one, perhaps something hard to screw up like chocolate or peanut butter. And why stress out over an ice cream that's only sold for part of the year, anyway? If you're reading Buffalo Chow, the answer's probably obvious: because if a Western New York-based business is going to stand out, it either needs more or better flavors than the bigger national brands, preferably both. Niche though it may be, this locally made ice cream was the rare item that could keep us excited about the freezer aisle; now, like the weakened version of Vernors, it's now no better than a competing national brand that's easier to find. Hopefully, Perry's will take up the challenge of improving its recipe - if it doesn't, we'll be buying Edy's version or something better in the future.