Should the term ice cream, in the sentence below, be countable or uncountable?
The bowl consists of mini scoops of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry ice cream.
The bowl consists of mini scoops of chocolate, vanilla and strawberry ice creams.
What if I were to delete mini scoops from the sentence? Would that change anything?
The bowl consists of chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice creams OR ice cream
Which is correct?
Answer
"Scoops of ice cream" is correct.
In this example, ice cream is not serving as countable thing, it is an uncountable base material out of which something countable is formed.
My bowl has scoops of ice cream.
If you are using ice cream to refer to the individual portions, rather than the material, then they are countable things. Perhaps there are regional variations, but on the west coast of the US, ice creams would be the typical usage.
I am going to get an ice cream. Would you like one?
I would like two strawberry ice creams, one in a cone, and one in a cup.
Note related to discussion in the comments of the original post:
"I collect ice creams from around the world" is fine - apart from the logistics involved in pursuing the hobby. Here I would assume that the speaker collects samples of different varieties of ice cream.
If I hear "I collect ice cream from around the world" it sounds like the speaker is amassing ice cream indiscriminately (as much total ice cream as possible) rather than procuring a sampling of the worlds best flavors (as many total ice creams as possible.)
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