What type of ice cream is your favorite?

A little history on Black America's favorite ice cream

Happy Sunday, yall! It’s late but not too late for brunch. I hope your day is going well? Mine, it’s pretty good. You know I have many fond memories of my grandma, and I miss her every day. Living away from home sometimes feels like a giant hole in my heart that can not be fixed. Earlier this week, I was reminiscing on our time together and thought back to how she was ALWAYS making candy! Now, if you know my grandma then you’ve probably been lucky enough to try her pecan candy.

I have memories of her sitting next to the stove, stirring away, and the huge pot on the stove. Pecan candy was a staple in my house growing up, but would you believe me if I said EYE don’t like pecan candy? Yes, yes, I know, very weird, but I never saw the hype. Really, I didn’t like the actual pecans. And knowing this, my grandma would always save me some pecan-less candy on the side.

Thinking about her led me down a rabbit hole of pecan candy and ultimately to butter pecan ice cream. That is basically a Black community favorite ice cream flavor. By the late 1800s and early 1900s, ice cream was becoming more accessible across America. Soda fountains and ice cream parlors were popping up in towns across the South, serving up vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry to anyone who could pay.

Now there is a story that's been making rounds about butter pecan ice cream—one that connects this beloved Southern flavor to the exclusions of Jim Crow. While the exact details are still being debated by historians, what's clear is that butter pecan became deeply rooted in Black Southern communities, building on culinary traditions that stretch back generations.

Butter pecan ice cream has long been associated with Southern cuisine and soul food. The combination makes perfect sense when you think about it—pecans are native to the American South, and Black cooks had been working with these nuts for generations, especially in the famous pralines of New Orleans.

Pralines themselves tell an incredible story of culinary fusion. In the kitchens of 18th and 19th century New Orleans, enslaved and free women of color took French confection techniques and transformed them using local pecans and their own knowledge of working with sugar. These weren't just candies—they were innovations that combined European methods with indigenous ingredients and African culinary wisdom.

The leap from pralines to butter pecan ice cream wasn't a huge one. Black cooks who already knew how to toast pecans to perfection, how to achieve the right balance of sweetness and nuttiness, and how to create that signature buttery richness had all the skills needed to translate these flavors into frozen desserts.

During the era of segregation, there are accounts—though historians are still verifying the specifics—that suggest Black Americans were sometimes denied access to certain ice cream flavors at white establishments. Whether this was vanilla specifically or just general exclusion from ice cream parlors altogether, the result was the same: Black families made their own frozen treats at home.

What's documented is that Black communities gravitated toward flavors that used ingredients they knew well and could access. Pecans grew in Southern backyards. Butter was a staple in Black kitchens. The techniques for toasting nuts and creating rich, creamy bases were already part of the culinary knowledge passed down through families.

Making ice cream at home meant hand-cranked churns, community effort, and the kind of patience that comes from knowing good things take time. It also meant control—over ingredients, over quality, and over who got to enjoy the final product. When you're systematically excluded from participating in American commercial life, you create your own systems of pleasure and community.

The connection between pralines and butter pecan ice cream runs deeper than just shared ingredients. Both represent the same kind of culinary innovation—taking exclusion or limitation and transforming it into something exceptional. Pralines emerged from the constraints of slavery and the mixing of culinary traditions. Butter pecan ice cream, whether born from specific denial or general exclusion, became a way for Black communities to create something that was theirs.

Both treats also became sources of economic opportunity. Just as praline-makers could sell their confections on street corners and at markets, butter pecan ice cream became a staple of Black-owned businesses and community gatherings.

Today, butter pecan is one of the most popular ice cream flavors in America, especially in the South. Walk into any ice cream shop and you'll likely find it alongside vanilla and chocolate as a standard option. The irony—if the stories about exclusion are true—is that what was once denied became something that white establishments now proudly serve.

What we know for certain is that butter pecan ice cream is deeply embedded in Black Southern food culture, connected to generations of culinary knowledge that includes the art of praline-making, and represents the kind of innovation that emerges when communities are forced to create their own spaces of joy and comfort.