Memories: Good Old Mellorine

Photo: Cristie Guevara

Good Old Mellorine

by Charles Pogue

Being a child of the 1950s I have memories of some things that children today do not have the privilege of even knowing what some of those things are, or that they ever existed at all. One of those things is a desert called Mellorine.

When we were not making homemade ice cream, we had Mellorine instead.

Sure, there was real ice cream available on the store shelves, but my family could hardly afford that kind of luxury so we had Mellorine. We called it ice cream, but it was more like a custard, sherbet, or even frozen yogurt.

The best way to describe Mellorine is that it has the same relationship to ice cream that margarine does to butter. Instead of having a base of cream, Mellorine was made with a base of vegetable oil, or other oil. Sounds awful, but it tasted pretty good.

Almost every week, the Piggly Wiggly store over in the country seat of Georgetown, Texas, had Mellorine on sale for three half gallon cartons for a dollar.

My brothers and sisters and I always knew the Friday’s when Daddy’s payday were coming around, and we knew he would bring home some vanilla, chocolate, or neapolitan (a combination of vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry) Mellorine.

After supper was finished, Momma would bring out a carton of that Mellorine, place a bowl in front of each of us kids, and hand Daddy a butcher knife. The rectangular shaped cardboard cartons were made so they could be completely unfolded, and lay flat on the table. That is what Daddy did with them.

I can remember the eyes of us kids were transfixed upon him with that knife in his hand and wondering if he would slice all of the sections the same, and if there was one that was a little bigger than the others, who would get that one.

Well, he was very adroit at slicing those portions equally. He filled each of the bowls before they were passed around the table. We sat there watching with our mouths watering, and knowing just how good that Superior Dairies product was going to be.

We relished those Friday nights with all seven of us grinning at one another and enjoying that good old, and I’m going to call it ice cream Mellorine.

I don’t know if they even make it anymore, but it was one of those products that we enjoyed, and did it get the weekend off to a great start!

How many of you remember Mellorine?