Blue moon is this bright, cosmic blue ice cream. It’s considered quintessentially Midwestern and thoroughly mysterious. No one can agree on what it tastes like, and no one who knows the flavoring will say.
After a lot of digging and a lot of dead ends, we figure out how to get the answer.
Credits:
Producer: Morgan Springer
Editor: Kalila Holt
Additional Editing: Dan Wanschura, Peter Payette, Claire Keenan-Kurgan, Ruth Abramovitz
Host: Dan Wanschura
Music: Blue Dot Sessions
Transcript:
DANIEL WANSCHURA, HOST: This is Points North, a podcast about the land, water and inhabitants of the Great Lakes. I’m Dan Wanschura.
MORGAN SPRINGER, BYLINE: Okay, you’re recording.
WANSCHURA: I’m recording.
SPRINGER: Great.
WANSCHURA: This is Morgan Springer. You might know her as the editor of our podcast, but I know her as the person who is trying to solve a mystery.
SPRINGER: So I’ve called you here today because I want to tell you a little story.
WANSCHURA: Yeah, go for it.
SPRINGER: Okay. Last summer, a couple summers ago, can't quite remember. I was in … my husband's aunt's house. Dinner had wrapped up, and she brought out the ice cream. And it was Blue Moon ice cream. … So you probably know Blue Moon is like really bright blue. Some people say it's Smurf blue. … And it's kind of quintessentially Midwestern.
WANSCHURA: Mmmm.
SPRINGER: You can't easily find it outside the region, … specifically in the Great Lakes region, like really concentrated in Wisconsin and in Michigan.
WANSCHURA: Okay.
SPRINGER: We’re eating the ice cream, and it’s often considered a kid’s dessert, but we all think it’s really good. And as we’re eating, we’re wondering what is the flavor? Because, honestly, we don’t agree on what we’re tasting. And there are no clues on the carton.
WANSCHURA: Yeah, 'cause- well, with most ice creams you like know, “Oh, there's moose tracks. Vanilla ice cream with peanut butter cups and fudge” or whatever.
SPRINGER: Right. Right. There's no mystery. … And the goal of this story today is to try to figure out what's in blue moon? What is blue moon ice cream?
WANSCHURA: Okay. … I’m always in for a good scoop, Morgan.
SPRINGER: Nice, very nice.
WANSCHURA: Thank you.
SPRINGER: And so we're gonna start really simply. I wanna give you an assignment.
WANSCHURA: Oh boy.
SPRINGER: I want you to go out and talk to people who have had blue moon – maybe love it. – and see what they think. What do they think- what do they think it tastes like?
WANSCHURA: And this, dear listener, is the point at which I curse this story and wish I’d said I was not “always in for a good scoop.”
WANSCHURA: We're talking about the thing I fear most about my job, which is going up to random people and trying to get them to comment on mic. You should know better. … I sort of just get like … the sweats, just thinking about that. Seriously.
SPRINGER: Now I can sit back, while Dan finds out if everyone disagrees on blue moon’s flavor. Or if there’s some consensus.
WANSCHURA: Check one two, testing testing one two three.
SPRINGER: And so a sweaty Dan reluctantly becomes my investigator on an ice cream mission, wandering the streets of Traverse City, Michigan.
WANSCHURA: Excuse me, do you guys have time to answer a quick question about ice cream?
PERSON 1: No.
PERSON 2: Uh not today.
WANSCHURA: Not having a good day right there.
WANSCHURA: But finally, people start talking.
WANSCHURA: What is Blue Moon ice cream?
RESPONSES: “It's the flavor.” “Blueberry.” “Blueberry flavor?” “Some kind of berry and lots of sugar.” “I wouldn't say it's like a blueberry taste really?” “Cotton candy-ish.” “I thought it was like cotton candy flavors.” “Yeah, it's kind of like cotton candy. Overly sweet.” “Strawberry?” “Butterscotch, honestly.” “I don't know, bubblegum?”
“I would describe it as a nutty flavor almost.” “No, I would say like a fruity pebble flavor.” “Vanilla” “Is it the blue Vanilla?” “Vanilla from Superman?” “Superman?” “Vanilla meets superman ice cream.” “It probably has a vanilla base” “Dyed vanilla ice cream.” “And you have the flavoring.” “Maybe have a spice to it though.” “Like I can't really like decipher what flavor it is, it's just like flavor.” “Indescribable, but it's blue.”
WANSCHURA: Okay, so clearly it’s common to disagree on the flavoring. No consensus there. People do mostly agree on where they think blue moon comes from. “The Midwest,” they say. “I’ve lived in other places, and I never saw blue moon.” Those are the straightforward people. And then there are the smart-alecks.
WANSCHURA: Where do you think blue moon ice cream comes from?
PERSON 1: Probably the space program back in the 80s. Honestly, if we’re going to be honest, it was probably Neil Armstrong.
PERSON 2: I don’t know, ice cream shops?
WANSCHURA: The nerve on that kid.
WANSCHURA: My energy for this is about done, Morgan.
SPRINGER: After this incredibly taxing mission, Dan returns to his comfortable position as host – where he gets to introduce exciting stories, and I get to do all the work.
I decide I need to leave those amateurs to their waffling and talk to some real experts about the flavor. I need to listen to that sassy kid, and call up some ice cream shops.
That’s coming after the break.
(Phone ringing)
MOOMERS: Moomers homemade ice cream. How can I help you?
SPRINGER: After a bunch of unsuccessful calls, I finally talk to Becky Mead. She's a co-owner of Moomers, based in Michigan.
SPRINGER: My name is Morgan Springer.
BECKY MEAD: Okay.
SPRINGER: And I was hoping to chat with you about ice cream, specifically blue moon.
MEAD: Blue Moon. Okay.
SPRINGER: Do you carry it?
MEAD: We do carry it.
SPRINGER: Okay. You said blue moon in a way that made me-
MEAD: It's just an odd phone call like, ‘Hey, let's talk about Blue Moon. I dunno.’
SPRINGER: Yeah. I guess it is an odd-
MEAD: Not what I've gotten before. How about that?
SPRINGER: Okay, I'll take it. Well, I'm calling about blue moon because it's got- it's like one of those very distinct ice creams that people have really different ideas about what it tastes like.
MEAD: Uh huh.
SPRINGER: What do you think it tastes like?
MEAD: That's a great question. I think we will say it tastes- it's a fruity flavor. I don't know that I have a personal idea of what blue moon tastes like. It tastes like blue moon, and I know that sounds silly, but like, you come in and you say, ‘Mint chocolate chip.’ Mint is the flavor, but blue moon is the flavor, but the world doesn't know what blue moon is. You know what I mean? … It’s a blue moon flavoring.
SPRINGER: When you say it's a blue moon flavoring, does that mean you buy in a flavoring from a flavoring company?
MEAD: Correct. Yes. Yep. Yep.
SPRINGER: What is the company that you get it from?
MEAD: FlavorSum. I mean you could call FlavorSum.
SPRINGER: Yeah, I will. I wonder if they'll tell me
MEAD: See if you can get anywhere with them.
(FlavorSum phone tree then hold music)
FLAVORSUM STAFF: Hello
SPRINGER: Hi, my name’s Morgan Springer. I’m a reporter. And I am calling from a recorded line, and I was hoping to chat with somebody about your blue moon flavor.
FLAVORSUM STAFF: No thank you. Thank you.
SPRINGER: Hello?
(sound of hanging up)
SPRINGER: That’s weird. Okay.
SPRINGER: Not exactly the sound of a mystery being solved.
I try calling FlavorSum a couple other times. But I never get a response. I’m beginning to think someone doesn’t want me to solve this mystery.
I’m getting nowhere just straight up asking about blue moon’s ingredients. So, it’s time to shift gears. (The internet is no help. It’s full of other people wondering the same thing and coming up cold.)
My new plan, though, is to figure out who first made blue moon. Because if I can find that person, they can tell me what’s in it.
The rumors are it was either invented in Michigan or Wisconsin. But which one? Luckily, I have very little work to do on that. A reporter from the Chicago Tribune did it all for me back in 2007. What she’d figured out was that the blue moon flavoring came from this company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin called Petran Products.
Of course, the company doesn’t exist anymore. It was sold off to another company, and then another. But I Hansel and Gretel my way to the current owner, following the ice cream drips to Weber Flavors outside Chicago.
I call Weber Flavors many times to see what they know about the inventors of blue moon. Each time, a friendly person picks up the phone. They hear about my mission, and they tell me I should talk to Bill. They say: “He knows everything around here. He’s kind of the go-to guy.”
But the go-to guy does not return my messages. The closest I get to him is a woman who quotes his words to me.
VIRGINIA BALINGIT: I did speak to Bill, and he said the gentleman who knew the most about blue moon was Jim Doig. However, he had passed away last year. … And we don’t have any info that he left behind for us.
SPRINGER: The one guy who might have known the inventor of blue moon isn’t around to tell me. But I’m not going to let that stop me from getting to the bottom of what’s in this ice cream.
So, I do what any normal person would do and call up his widow. She tells me she’s heard the story. Her husband worked with this guy William Sidon. He was the head chemist at Petran Products, and he invented blue moon, she says.
But he’s also dead. So I track down his daughter.
Nancy Smuckler. Long-time lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Recently retired. Prefers coffee ice cream.
Nancy tells me the story of her father ended up a flavor chemist.
NANCY SMUCKLER: My parents had left Austria after Hitler invaded because they were Jewish. And they were able to get out because my dad had a PhD from the University of Vienna in organic chemistry. And he wound up with a job at Abbott Laboratories … developing drugs that they were trying to use during World War II for the soldiers going to the tropics who encountered different diseases.
SPRINGER: There was a whole group of Jewish chemists from Germany and Austria who had come to the U.S. and were working at Abbott in Philadelphia. Nancy says they were brilliant, but none of them were getting promoted.
SMUCKLER: And part of that might have been, … I'm gonna be real honest … antisemitism. …This is historical. I mean, it's beyond even my time, and I know I'm older than you because I’m just retired. There were … private clubs, no Jews allowed, quotas in universities. … So I think the times were different.
SPRINGER: Her father eventually landed at Petran Products – the company blue moon came from, working on all sorts of flavors.
SMUCKLER: He was the delight of his grandchildren when they were little. He would bring home all these new flavors and things he was trying out. He'd bring them chocolate pudding one week in small containers and say, ‘Which one is best? You're my tasters.’
SPRINGER: Oh my gosh, that's so fun.
SMUCKLER: Yeah, my kids thought this was great. Ice cream and chocolate milk, and he was concocting and trying out various things.
SPRINGER: But had he ever talked about inventing blue moon? Nancy says, umpteen years ago, a reporter had called and told her, her father was probably the creator of it.
SMUCKLER: I do not ever remember him personally telling me that he invented Blue Moon, but … the best guess [was] it was my father. But no one said with 100 percent certainty, and I sure couldn't.
SPRINGER: Have you ever had blue moon?
SMUCKLER: Yeah, I don't like it. … It's too sweet and candy-like for me. … But I think my grandkids now were impressed. They must have had it when they were little.
SPRINGER: I mean, do you know if your dad- did he ever even mention it?
SMUCKLER: No, but he was a very quiet person, and he didn't – except for bringing the stuff home for the grandchildren – he never talked much about his work. And I’ll be very honest … chemistry was not one of my favorite subjects in high school, and so I never talked to him about chemistry really. …
SMUCKLER: The only reason that I ever saw him get excited [was] when I was in high school and dating boys. My father had a motorcycle in Europe, and he wiped out on it and cracked his chin … and never had one after that. He couldn't afford one, and then he had a wife and kids and didn't get one. And I had a couple of guys who I was dating who would ride over in motorcycles, and he'd look at them and say, ‘Can I take that for a short ride?’ You know. So-
SPRINGER: That's so the opposite of what I'd imagine a father might say, “Get away from my daughter!” Not, “Can I ride your motorcycle?”
SMUCKLER: Right, right.
SPRINGER: Does it matter to you whether or not your father did invent blue moon?
SMUCKLER: No, but I think the nice part is, in his own way, he was a very modest guy, and he was a very special guy who did a lot of interesting things. … So I think it's nice that he's getting some credit. Whether it's true, we're not sure.
SPRINGER: Now I have to figure out if it is true. Then track down what that original blue moon was made of.
But quickly, something happens that crushes this beautiful origin story.
It comes in the form of dreadful and dreary paperwork, specifically a trademark. The blue moon trademark. And it says blue moon was first used by Petran Products in 1939.
Crap. Nancy says her father hadn’t worked there ‘til the 50s. This story of a quiet man who escapes Hitler, comes up with this quirky bright blue ice cream, and never talks about it … it had just gone poof in my hands.
The next natural step would be to track down other origin stories in the Midwest. But that blows up too. Because I find out this quintessentially Midwestern ice cream flavor might not even be from the Midwest.
There’s this newspaper clipping from 1936, three years before the trademark. In a section titled “Shopping News” next to a column declaring that “knit frocks and suits will hold their own again this Fall and Winter” is an announcement. Blossom Dairy would now be serving blue moon. “A fruit mixture with delightful flavor and color,” reads the ad. It’s in the Charleston Gazette, a newspaper decidedly not in the Midwest, but in another west, West Virginia.
You could also get blue moon ice cream in Somerset, Pennsylvania in 1935 at your local IXL dealer – whatever that is.
The search for the origin of blue moon and its ingredients has gone from the Midwest to, I don’t know, everywhere? It’s feeling like a dead end. It’s time to shift gears again.
So I’m gonna try to reverse engineer this thing and turn to chemistry. Can I get a food chemist take some blue moon flavoring, do science-y things to it, and come back with an ingredient list? Solve this mystery once and for all?
That’s after the break.
SPRINGER: Richard Hartel — he’s a guy who knows a lot about science-y things. He’s a professor of food science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. And he gets how flavors work.
RICHARD HARTEL: So somebody put together the flavors – and by flavors I mean the chemical compounds that are volatile – that when you eat something, they kind of explode into your nose and give you that sense of flavor- aroma rather.
SPRINGER: There might actually be a few different versions of blue moon. Because there are all these different flavor houses dedicated to making things more flavorful, and they come up with their own flavors, often for the same thing.
HARTEL: Like I was looking for a carrot flavor this year, and every different company that I talked to had a different flavor profile, carrot profile. And-
SPRINGER: Why were you searching for carrot flavors?
HARTEL: Because, well, there's a whole story there too, right?
SPRINGER: Well, tell me. (laughing)
HARTEL: In one of my classes, we have a class period on sensory science, which is you put food in front of people and ask them what they think. And one of the things that governs or guides how we taste things is the appearance. So every year we play a game with candy orange slices, … and we put a different flavor in it. Last year we put rotisserie chicken flavor into it.
SPRINGER: Oh, gross.
HARTEL: It's gross. Yes. This year we decided we were going to go with something that’s orange. So we tried to put carrot in it. …
SPRINGER: So, that's really interesting what you said about appearance, because one of the things with blue moon ice cream is that people come up- they see it, they taste it, they don't really know what's in it, and they come up with so many different ideas of what's in it. You know, “Oh no, it's almond,” which is what I think it tastes most like. “It's fruit loops.” “It's cherry.” “It's vanilla.” “It's … bubble gum.” And it's almost like it becomes – because they don't know – it's like this mystery palate that they just replace with- I don't know if we replace it with what we want it to be or just what our palate is trained to think. What do you think?
HARTEL: I think most of us don't have very sophisticated palates, and we're just guessing. I mean, it's based on appearance, based on a lot of different things. Like that rotisserie chicken flavor. My guess was only about 10% of the people picked up on it. … Most of us can't do that.
When I have a flavor question, I go to one of my flavor chemists and ask her what, “So, what's going on there?” … And actually you’ve got me intrigued now. So, I'm going to send my flavorist a message and ask her what's in blue moon.
SPRINGER: Okay? Would– do you mind connecting me with her, too?
HARTEL: No, I'd rather keep that to myself. …
SPRINGER: It's a secret flavorist for a secret ice cream. So many secrets I can't keep track.
HARTEL: (laughs) Well, when I get her answer, I'll send back- I mean, she won't answer me with anything proprietary, but she'll give me some decent feedback.
SPRINGER: And so I waited.
Eventually, Professor Rich hears back from his top secret flavorist. He writes me an email saying unfortunately she can’t help. He says either the company she works for doesn’t have the flavor or quote, “It’s really, really proprietary.”
But Rich recommended another guy, Scott Rankin, also a professor of food science at University of Wisconsin-Madison. He might know if you can put blue moon flavoring into a machine and figure out what’s in it.
SCOTT RANKIN: So, if someone gave me a vial of blue moon flavorant, I could put it in some instruments here, and we could determine in broad strokes what the actual molecules are. … Do I wanna position myself as having released that information? I don't know.
SPRINGER: Wait, tell me more. Why not?
RANKIN: Oh, well, it's a little bit like revealing the mystery of the Pepsi flavor or something like that – something iconic, you know.
SPRINGER: What- do you know? Do you know the mystery of the Pepsi flavor?
RANKIN: A little bit, but not in great detail.
SPRINGER: These dang proprietary flavors.
Scott figures these things out using something called gas chromatography. He injects the flavoring into it. It does its thing. And then it comes out with a pretty good guess of what the chemical compounds are in the flavoring. (By the way, it’s usually hundreds of compounds.)
RANKIN: It will say, ‘I have 80% confidence that a compound … is ethyl butyrate.’ Okay. And then we regard that as a tentative identification.
SPRINGER: Scott gives me the name of a company that does this work. We can pay them and have them run blue moon. He tells me what department to call. He even tells me what main compounds he suspects they’ll find.
I’m starting to wonder, though, if I actually want to know this. I’m conflicted. Do I seriously want to take a bite of blue moon, something I kinda like, and think about chemical compounds like vanillin and ethyl butyrate? Or is it more fun to not know and imagine it’s whatever flavor hits me?
RANKIN: Right, right, right. Well, I think the same thing applies to a lot of things that we enjoy, like we're, our brain is trying to fill in something. And that's part of the attraction. It's like a challenge to like look at a painting and see what the, what the artist was trying to depict or what they saw. … And I think that's a great tact on this is that maybe, maybe it's good to have a little mystery in our lives.
SPRINGER: Yeah.
RANKIN: I'm sure there's a better analogy, but, you know, it's the effect of the Wizard of Oz before or after Dorothy discovered- you look behind the curtain kind of thing. So, I think blue moon unraveled may not have as great a value to your readership as it would as a mystery.
SPRINGER: Yeah. I kind of agree.
RANKIN: Yeah. It's funny that we stumbled onto that, but I think that's a good position perhaps for things. Like name more things like blue moon, you know what I mean? Like you don't quite understand, you know what-
SPRINGER: The universe, right?
RANKIN: Right.
SPRINGER: Spirituality, I don't know.
RANKIN: Two of my sons studied physics in school, and there are all these things right at the edge of what we can understand. And that's just such a compelling thing, you know, to like-
SPRINGER: Yeah. And there's still room for the imagination.
RANKIN: Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
SPRINGER: You know, if you tell me blue moon is this, that, and that, well then I'm gonna taste probably this, that, and that.
RANKIN: That's right. Yeah. Yeah.
SPRINGER: It’s time to tell Dan the news.
SPRINGER: Well, we're at a crossroads, Dan. We can pay for a company to analyze blue moon flavoring
WANSCHURA: To get the answer once and for all. …
SPRINGER: Or we could decide not to get the answer and to let sleeping dogs lie.
WANSCHURA: Morgan, there's something about it. This was going to be this big investigative journalism piece, and now I feel like you're going soft. … I'm processing this. This is all happening in real time here. So it's kind of- I so wanted to know, and I wanted it to be like this big reveal at the end that was like, “Ah, see!” … As I'm thinking about it a little bit more, it is nice to have some things in life that are just left to the imagination.
SPRINGER: So Dan and I eventually agree, we’re not going to be like my Uncle Isaiah, who gave away the big secret about Christmas. We’re not going to be the spoilsports who ruin the mystery of blue moon.
WANSCHURA: I don't think I need to know that bad.
SPRINGER: Yeah.
WANSCHURA: Yeah … You know, I'm imagining maybe someday when my kids are a little older having this debate with them, and how less exciting it would be if I actually knew the flavor, but I- and I said, you know, “It's actually this or that.” You know, like it- that wouldn't be very fun.
SPRINGER: If you’re bummed, I’m sorry. Really, I am. But I’ll tell you this, it’s in your hands now. You can contact a company and find out what’s in blue moon. You can be the one who ruins it for yourself.
