Does Your School Have an Official Ice Cream?

Mizzou has been teaching and researching the science of ice cream since the early 1920s.

It began with the study of the texture of ice cream, then grew into experimentation with new flavors, and blossomed with pioneer work to create low-fat ice cream and frozen yogurt. But in the beginning, it was the campus’ Eckles Hall Ice Cream Shop that dished out their very own vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry concoctions from the early 1920s until financial issues forced them to close in 1972. In 1989, the shop reopened as Buck’s Ice Cream Place after Professor Wendell “Buck” Arbuckle and his wife, Ruth, donated nearly $160,000 to start an endowment to bring ice cream research back to Mizzou.

Arbuckle, an MU grad who became a consultant for Baskins Robbins Ice Cream Company, was nicknamed Dr. Ice Cream because of his breakthrough research in the field. In 1940, he published his dissertation called “A microscopic and statistical analysis of texture and structure of ice cream as affected by composition, physical properties and processing methods.” It’s clear Arbuckle’s passions for ice cream and his alma mater could not have come together any better.

In an article on Mizzou’s website, Randy Mertens writes “Buck’s Ice Cream Place is just the most visible part of the total program. Behind the cheery store front is an integrated research, teaching and service-oriented laboratory where food science students learn everything about ice cream from maintenance and inventory to manufacturing and retail.” Speaking of research, one project headed up by a man named Robert Marshall lead to Mizzou’s favorite flavor: Tiger Stripe Ice Cream. It launched in 1992 just three years after the shop reopened, and is a mixture of gold-colored French vanilla (the main flavor) fused with “stripes” of dark Dutch chocolate. An early option for Tiger Stripe Ice Cream that never made it out of the lab? Orange sherbet and licorice. You can imagine the taste and why it never saw the light of day.

Now, Tiger Stripe Ice Cream from Buck’s Ice Cream Place is so ingrained into Mizzou’s culture that it’s handed out to every freshman after they march through the Columns, an act that signifies their entrance into university and the start of their first four years as a lifelong Tiger.

In the SEC, It Just Means More.

To Mizzou, It Just Means More Than Just Screaming for Ice Cream.