Hear me out: While I don’t know about chocolate candies and the like, all chocilate baking recipies I’ve ever used call for vanilla. I’ve accidentally forgotten the vanilla before and the resulting flavor profile was really flat, bland, and rather unenjoyable.

Vanilla is an incredibly important base flavor for a lot of things, and helps balance out cacao. For that reason alone I’d say vanilla is objectively better because even chocolate wouldn’t really chocolate in a lot of - if not all - circumstances without it.

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Context and quality is key

well, since taste is subjective and you’re looking for an objective measure, I’m just going to judge on other grounds! I suspect that the vanilla industry is less bad for the environment and has a better track record with labor violations, so vanilla is better.

Now, I didn’t research that first, and I could definitely be wrong… but at least it’s something one can actually be wrong about.

When you say objectively, do you mean closer to the platonic ideal of ice cream? Closer to THE ice cream, by which all other ice cream is known?

In that case consider: what of what makes ice cream ice cream is present in vanilla and chocolate versions? Moose tracks is a great ice cream, and it shares it’s base with vanilla. But rocky road is also stellar, and it has a chocolate base. But in general, more ice cream types share the base with vanilla than chocolate. That would indicate vanilla is closer to the shared idea of all ice cream.

Further more, chocolate is a separate ideal of itself. No one desires the ideal vanilla extract, it is nothing on its own. So the ideal ice cream, totally disconnected from the material world and other ideals, would be closer to the blank slate vanilla than the specialized chocolate. Vanilla the word is even short hand for unaltered.

So in conclusion, from a deep examination of the platonic forms and ideals of ice cream, vanilla is objectively superior.

That being said, in my opinion chocolate is objectively superior in every way.

The best one is obectively the one you like the most.

It has been scientifically proven chocolate is the better flavour. My source? Don’t worry about it.

I dislike drinking/eating vanilla on it’s own. I like drinking/eating chocolate.

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Comparison of excellent quality vanilla vs excellent quality chocolate should leave you with the takeaway that both are excellent. you may have a preference for one over the other but that’s hardly objective

My personal preference shifts based on mood and (more so) based on quality. Excellent chocolate bar vs budget ice cream that uses vanillin instead of actual vanilla beans? Probably the chocolate unless I’m searching for that nostalgic artificial vanilla flavor. A shitty chocolate snack cake with like 2% actual chocolate and 98% palm oil vs a well made panna cotta? Going vanilla.

I like both. I can’t decide on one

I don’t know why this was downvoted so much. It’s an honest question. But anyways, I’ll go for chocolate because chocolate can go with mint.

vanilla is a lot more versatile in my day to day life. Of the two id say chocolate would be less jarring if it disappeared from my life.

I’m gonna go chocolate. Certain things I prefer vanilla though. Like vanilla fudge is the shit. But ice cream I’m going chocolate.