Hand-dipped ice cream is scooped fresh from a tub rather than pre-packaged or dispensed from a machine, a distinction many classic American parlors still advertise on their signs. The term separates old-fashioned, made-to-order scoops from soft serve and packaged pints, and it remains a selling point for ice cream shops.

Chocolate-coated ice cream bars trace back to the 1920s, when Iowa candy shop owner Christian Kent Nelson developed Edy’s Pie, a bar of ice cream coated in a thin chocolate shell, after a young customer couldn’t decide between candy and ice cream. He patented the idea in 1922 and it went on to become one of the most widely copied ice cream formats in the world.

Soft serve is churned at a warmer temperature and with more air, or overrun, than hard ice cream, giving it a lighter, softer texture straight from the machine. Its invention in the United States is credited separately to Dairy Queen’s Tom Elliott and J.F. “Grandpa” McCullough in 1938, and to Carvel founder Tom Carvel around the same period, and it remains a summer staple at drive-ins and stands nationwide.

The ice cream sandwich is generally traced to early 1900s New York City, where street vendors sold a scoop of ice cream pressed between two thin wafers or graham crackers for a penny, making it an affordable treat for working-class city dwellers. The format has since become a grocery store staple, with cookie, wafer, and even brioche variations.

Paletas are Mexican-style ice pops, made with either fresh fruit and water or a milk base, and traditionally sold from carts by street vendors known as paleteros. Popular flavors include mango, tamarind, and hibiscus, and the treat has become a fixture in Mexican-American communities across the American Southwest and beyond.

Mochi ice cream wraps a small scoop of ice cream in a thin layer of pounded sweet rice dough, a format popularized in the United States by Mikawaya, a Los Angeles bakery that began producing it in the early 1990s under the direction of Frances Hashimoto. The chewy exterior and cold, creamy center have made it a distinct alternative to a standard scoop.

Fried ice cream involves coating a firmly frozen scoop in a crunchy shell, often cereal, cookie crumbs, or batter, then briefly frying it so the outside crisps while the center stays frozen. It is commonly served at Mexican and Chinese-American restaurants in the United States, typically finished with honey, cinnamon, or whipped cream.

Kulfi is a creamy frozen dessert from South Asia, made by slowly reducing milk and then freezing it without churning, which gives it a texture noticeably thicker than typical ice cream. It is often flavored with cardamom, pistachio, saffron, or mango, and its origins are frequently traced back to the Mughal era on the Indian subcontinent.

Rolled ice cream is made by pouring a liquid ice cream base onto an extremely cold flat pan, spreading it thin, and scraping it into tight curls as it freezes. The technique originated as a street food in Thailand, where it is sometimes called stir-fried ice cream or Thai rolled ice cream, and spread internationally after videos of the process went viral online in the mid-2010s.

Brioche con gelato is a Sicilian specialty in which a scoop or two of gelato is tucked inside a soft, slightly sweet brioche bun, often eaten alongside an espresso or granita. It is a traditional summer breakfast in Sicily, particularly in cities like Catania and Palermo, where locals treat it as a normal way to start a hot morning.

Gelato served in a cone is the classic Italian format, and gelato itself differs from American-style ice cream in having less butterfat and less air churned into it, which gives it a denser, more intensely flavored result. Italian gelaterias typically churn it slower and serve it slightly warmer than ice cream, another reason its texture feels notably different in the cone.