9 Vintage Ice Cream Desserts Everyone Should Try Once

There have been plenty of popular desserts throughout the years, but the ones that contain ice cream are often the ones we keep coming back to. There's something about the combination of creamy, smooth, dairy flavors and sharp, sugary notes that hits the spot every single time, and has made ice cream a staple in desserts for generations. However, as food fashions have changed, so have the ways that people use ice cream in their recipes. This has led to a host of ice cream desserts dropping off the radar, with former favorites being lost to the sands of time and long forgotten about.

Well, not anymore. We decided to dive back into the cookbooks of yore, and see which ice cream desserts our forefathers were making. Some of them, like cherries jubilee and peach melba, might be fairly familiar desserts that have nonetheless become retro, niche affairs in recent years. Others, like Jell-O ice cream and pineapple mousse, are long-gone sweet treats that are in dire need of a resurgence. Read on, and you'll see exactly why these ice cream desserts hit the spot all those years ago.

If you've ever eaten anywhere with a slightly vintage feel — an old-timey diner, for example, or a themed restaurant — you may well have seen cherries jubilee on the menu, and wondered what it is. Don't worry, guys: We're here to tell ya. Cherries jubilee is a fairly simple combination of cherries doused with liquor, and ice cream. What makes this dessert stand apart is how it's prepared and served. When your dish arrives at your table, the liquor-doused cherries are set on fire. This flambé gives them a deep, toasted, caramelized flavor.

Cherries jubilee dates back to the late 19th century, where it was first invented by chef Auguste Escoffier. The dish was invented for the diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria, to celebrate 60 years of her sitting on the throne in the United Kingdom. What was once a royal dish became a dessert made and enjoyed by millions of people in the 1950s, when the recipe made its way into cookbooks around the world. The beauty of the dish was that it offered a fancy feeling with just a few ingredients. While cherries jubilee has waned in popularity in the last few decades, it's easy enough to make it yourself at home.

The years immediately following World War Two were marked by their optimism and excess, and nowhere was that more apparent than in the food people were making. If you need an example of this, look no further than the rainbow snowball cake. This little-known cake first appeared in an edition of the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook published in the 1950s. In the cookbook, the rainbow snowball cake was a towering affair, with layers of individual scoops of ice cream and sherbet piled on top of each other. These scoops were then encased in a thick layer of vanilla-flavored ice cream, which was whipped until fluffy, with the whole thing crammed into a Bundt cake pan and served while still cold.

Honestly, we're not totally surprised that this cake didn't take off. It seems like it was a real trial to make, and took a lot of different ingredients. However, the excess of the rainbow snowball cake, its sheer visual appeal, and its ability to offer multiple different flavors in one go makes it a winner in our eyes. Now, if someone could just figure out how to make a simplified version, then we'd be ready to eat.

If you've never eaten Jell-O and ice cream together, you haven't lived: The combo of jiggly, sharp jell-O and creamy, sweet ice cream is a real match made in heaven. However, in our journey to the past we discover a slightly bizarre mash-up of the two that's mostly been forgotten about. Recipes for Jell-O ice cream started to appear shortly after Jell-O itself was invented at the end of the 19th century. In recipe booklets from around 1910, Jell-O ice cream recipes instruct homeowners to mix milk, cream, jell-O powder, and mix-ins like chopped walnuts and peach, before freezing it all until the mixture is solid and creamy.

To be honest, we understand the logic behind this one. The thickening agents in the jell-O powder allowed the ice cream to firm up without needing to be churned, creating a smooth, somewhat glossy texture in the dessert. The flavor itself seemed to leave a little to be desired, and by modern standards it's nowhere near as fresh-tasting or smooth as regular ice cream — which is likely why it fell off the radar. However, for sheer novelty value, and for the ease by which it can be made, it'd be nice to see Jell-O ice cream come back one more time.

How did people keep cool in the mid-1930s? Well, apparently, it was by making and eating peppermint stick ice cream. The combo of mint and ice cream hasn't entirely gone off the radar, but this frozen snack made it a make-at-home affair incorporating a classic candy. The idea was simple: Home chefs were to take sweetened condensed milk and water and mix the two together, before adding whipped cream into the fray. Once the ingredients were combined, it was frozen for a couple hours, before being taken out, beaten again, and then filled with crushed peppermint sticks. After a final blast in the freezer, it was ready to serve.

It's easy to see why this recipe appealed in the 1930s. Instead of having to churn the ice cream using a machine or by hand, the condensed milk and whipped cream did all the work. The peppermint sticks, meanwhile, gave each mouthful a pop of candy and a minty freshness. This ice cream has since been replaced by slightly more mature versions of mint ice cream, which tend to rely on extracts to create flavor, but we like the simplicity of this one.

Baked Alaska is one of those vintage desserts that everyone is aware of, but few people have actually tried — largely because it's so tricky to make. The baked Alaska (which is not actually from Alaska, but instead named to honor the United States' acquisition of the state from Russia) is a wonder of physics. The dessert consists of a ball of ice cream encased in a meringue which is baked in a hot oven until caramelized. The meringue insulates the ice cream, protecting it from melting, giving the person eating it an incredible hot-cold contrast.

Baked Alaska's origins go all the way back to the 1800s, when the dessert was first conceived. What was once a super fancy dessert soon became more widely known and eaten, and it enjoyed particular popularity in the mid-20th century as a showstopping end to a meal, especially on cruise ships. Nowadays, it's a bit of a rarer find, but if you see it on a restaurant menu it's definitely worth ordering. Not only will you be experiencing its unique physical properties, but you'll also be dining on a piece of food history.

If you're ever in New Orleans, bananas foster is a dish worth hunting down. This retro dessert was once all the rage in the Louisiana city, thanks to its ultra-local origins. Bananas Foster was created way back in 1951, when the owners and chef of Brennan's restaurant were going head-to-head with fellow eatery Antoine's, which was drawing customers in with its famed baked Alaska. Brennan's knew it had to come up with a signature dish of its own, and so Ella Brennan, sister of owner Owen, and chef Paul Blangé conceived of the idea of combining bananas with ice cream.

Well, they went a little further than that. Blangé's master stroke was to flambé the bananas in a combination of dark rum and banana liqueur, as well as cinnamon and dark rum. Doing this gave the bananas a deeply caramelized note, which offset the vanilla ice cream perfectly. As for the name bananas Foster, that came from Richard Foster, head of the New Orleans crime commission who frequently dined at the Brennan's. Little did he know that his surname would be immortalized in cookbooks for evermore.

If you want a quintessentially British dessert, look no further than the brilliantly named knickerbocker glory. This after-dinner treat is rarely eaten or seen anywhere in the British Isles these days, but back in the early and mid-20th century it was all the rage. The invention of the knickerbocker glory is pretty contentious. Some people claim that it was actually invented in the United States at the turn of the 20th century, while others state that it was created in the 1920s by Lyon's Bakeries in the United Kingdom. Elsewhere, folks argue that it truly took off in the 1950s, when it was championed by famous store Fortnum & Mason as a way to celebrate the end of sugar rationing and the opening of its new restaurant.

Well, we may not be able to agree where it started, but we can agree on one thing: The knickerbocker glory is very tasty. This dessert is essentially a towering ice cream sundae, filled with layers of ice cream, chopped nuts, fruit, chocolate, biscuits, or meringue. The whole thing is crowned with a hefty squirt of whipped cream, and adorned with a single glacé cherry and a wafer. It's definitely glorious, and it's certainly pretty sugary.

If you want a blast from the past with your dessert, pineapple mousse is the way to go. It's not too difficult to see why this ice cream dessert, which was promoted by The Indianapolis Times back in 1927, might have been an at-home favorite at the time. Pineapple mousse consisted of a combination of pineapple syrup, lemon juice, water, whipped cream, sugar, and granulated gelatin, which thanks to Jell-O was one of the most popular ingredients around. The ingredients were mixed together before being allowed to sit in the freezer, creating a kind of ice cream and jello mash-up that required no churning or much hands-on effort.

However, as Jell-O's appeal started to wane, it appears that jello-based ice creams like pineapple mousse started to die off. Nowadays, you're more likely to find pineapple flavored gelato or ice cream made with the real thing and skipping the use of gelatin entirely. We don't doubt, though, that the gelatin gave this ice cream a texture that was surprisingly appealing.

An ice cream dessert with an operatic backstory? Sign us up. This dessert is named after the famed soprano Nellie Melba, who in the 1890s was the name on everyone's lips in the opera world. After performing in Covent Garden in 1893, everybody was fighting for her attention, bestowing her with honors and compliments. The Duke of Orléans went one further, and asked chef Auguste Escoffier to conceive a dessert specifically for her — and thus, the legendary peach melba got its name.

Enough talk about how this ice cream dessert came to be, though: What's in it? Well, as you might have guessed, the peach melba is primarily based around peaches. These peaches are cooked until soft and peeled, before being simmered in a vanilla syrup. The peaches are topped with vanilla ice cream, with the duo crowned with raspberry purée and sliced almonds. It's a sweet, tart combination of flavors that would no doubt have left Nellie Melba herself feeling invigorated and ready to tackle the next aria. Nowadays it's seen as a bit of a niche offering, but if you ever see it on the menu, it's worth tucking into this esteemed dessert.