Why Is Mexico’s Ice Cream Culture Blowing Up?

Ice cream has a long history, one going back four thousand years and traversing the globe. And while enthusiasts planning to hit up some of the world’s best or most famous ice cream parlors might head to Italy, they should reconsider their plans and head south of the border instead. Why? Because Oaxaca, Mexico’s ice cream is among the best in the world.

To bone up on our history we stopped at the Oaxaca Ice Cream Museum (Museo de las Nieves), a museum that commemorates the area’s one hundred and fifty years of delicious tradition. The story starts in a village called La Neveria, in the Sierra Norte mountains above the Oaxaca valley, almost nine thousand feet above sea level. 

The village, which is a vertigo-inducing two-hour drive from the city, is known for cold temperatures that once made ice a prime industry. It was here that Doña María Manolo first made ice cream in 1857.

As in China and Europe, traditional Oaxacan ice cream was primarily fruit-based, with both milk and water preparations developing early on. The Manolo family built their business on ice cream, developing more than 100 receipts sold at various stores and carts around town. Their most famous? Leche quemada or burnt milk, “developed” when Doña María, attempting to make a vanilla custard ice, accidentally burnt it in the pot. [pagebreak]

The most common flavors in the city are fruit ices like limon and tuna (not nearly as wild as it sounds – tuna is the fruit of the prickly pear, not atun, the fish). Manolo’s has these mainstays, as well as strange new takes on local ingredients like goat’s cheese and hoja santa (the heart-shaped holy leaf, Piper auritum), cream of rose petal, and vanilla with rosemary.

Oaxacan favorites tend to be creamy and chunky. The besos (kisses), two traditional mixes, each contain a variety of fruits and nuts. Besos Oaxaqueños is an iced version of carrot cake, with shredded carrots and chunks of pineapple, pecans, and raisins in a vanilla base. Besos de Angel is a mix of cherries and nuts, often including both peanuts and either pecans or almonds, as well as coconut.

Chocolate lovers shouldn’t miss their chance to try Oaxacan chocolate at its finest. Mixed with passion fruit, with or without the spicy/salty chamoy, and grasshoppers. And if you order mezcal from the right maker, you might just get an extra shot to go with it!

The most common fruit ices can be found in street carts around the city, and vendors at local ice cream hot spots like the Basilica of Our Lady of Solitude downtown boast menus to rival Manolo’s legacy. Try them all.