There’s a right way, and there’s a wrong way to make a chocolate milkshake.

Method A:
Place chocolate ice cream and milk into a blender. Mix until desired consitency. Serve.

Method B:
Place vanilla ice cream into blender. Add chocolate syrup and milk. Mix until desired consistency. Serve.

What’s the difference you ask? Well, ‘A’ is a milkshake. Ice cream of the appropriate flavor blended with milk. On the other hand, ‘B’ is a cold chocolate-milk. What’s the point of the ice cream? If you want chocolate milk, just drink that. For me, the point of the milkshake is to consume ice cream by drinking it.

There seems to be a regional variation at work. On the east coast, I’ve usually received chocolate shakes of method ‘A,’ while other places (the midwest especially) use method ‘B.’ This phenomenon is also observed when ordering Dairy Queen blizzards. At the DQ’s in Wyckoff and Emerson, NJ, if you ask for a chocolate blizzard, you get chocolate ice cream with your desired topping. Elsewhere, they look at you a little funny, then make a vanilla blizzard and add syrup. I don’t understand this. The soft chocolate ice cream is right there, yet they do not use it.

Of course, other forces could be at work. This could be a conspiracy perpetrated on the unsuspecting public by the insidious chocolate syrup industry. It pains me to say anyone associated with chocolate is ‘insidious,’ but it’s possible.