Food - Drink
The Mysterious Origins of Michigan’s Superman Ice Cream Flavor
By FELIX BEHR
In Michigan, "Superman" not only refers to the Man of Steel, but to an ice cream flavor with a blue, red, and yellow color scheme that's straight out of a comic book. The flavors of the red and yellow parts vary — raspberry, banana, lemon, and black cherry are all possibilities — but the blue part is always Blue Moon, a unique regional ice cream flavor in and of itself.
The mysterious creation of Superman ice cream is often credited to Stroh's Brewery of Detroit, which began making ice cream after beer was outlawed during Prohibition. This means the ice cream flavor was not directly inspired by the superhero, since the start of Prohibition predates the classic comic by a decade; the dessert likely gained its modern name in retrospect.
The aforementioned Blue Moon, a must-have in Superman ice cream, has odd origins of its own. Not only is the taste hard to describe — amaretto, Froot Loops, ginger, and pineapple have all been named as suspects — but one rumor states that Blue Moon is flavored with castoreum, a compound that is harvested from the castor sacs of beavers.