Cherry-miso ice cream, made with a plant-based product called Eclipse. Photo: Liz Clayman

Over the weekend, I was invited to an OddFellows scoop shop, and, amid people editing their cone-centric Instagram posts, I got to try some ice cream. The flavor was cherry-miso, and the first thing that hit me was the deep umami funk. Miso is right in the name so, like, you think you get it, but it is continually surprising. Oh!, I thought, with every bite until it was gone. Its a team player, miso. It lifts the flavor of the cherries while also mellowing them. The flavor an OddFellows classic is a triumph of balance.

The other thing I noticed was a texture: thick, gently melting, ice-cream-y. Normally, when ice cream is the texture of ice cream, its not a big deal; it lives up to its contractual obligation. But this particular ice cream was not, technically, ice cream. It was made with a nondairy ice-cream base that came from a San Francisco start-up called Eclipse Foods. What Impossible Burgers did for plant-based beef, founders Thomas Bowman and Aylon Steinhart want to do for plant-based dairy.

There is, of course, no shortage of plant-based milks to choose from. If a plant exists, someone in a lab is trying to figure out how to milk it. (I recently tried banana milk; it tasted like bananas.) But there were veggie burgers before the Impossible Burger too. It broke through by re-creating the experience of eating beef and had its own version of a killer app: The Impossible Burger could bleed, thanks in part to an ingredient called soy leghemoglobin. What is the Eclipse equivalent that will set its faux-milk apart from the oat milks and rice milks of the world?

All the other dairy alternatives out there are just that: alternatives, Bowman says. What weve created is a dairy replacement. The goal is to create something that tricks your brain into thinking, Hey, this is milk, and not, Hey, this is a creamy liquid made from a nut.

Theres already a lot of vegan ice cream. Nick Morgenstern makes it. Sam Mason from OddFellows makes it himself. Van Leeuwen makes a lot of it. Ample Hills can make it. But still, ask ice-cream experts and they will tell you, there is a difference. It becomes an emotional connection, says Brian Smith, the co-founder of Ample Hills. If your mind is comparing it to being 6 or 7 and eating a vanilla ice-cream cone, its very hard to compete with that. (When I contacted the National Milk Producers Federation to ask about their feelings re: non-milk dairy, a rep got straight to the point: The vegan products aint ice cream.)

But Eclipses founders say theyve cracked it. Its not just that theyve been able to capture the heart and soul of dairy. Its that theyve managed to do it cheaply. Eclipse doesnt use any nuts or seeds or coconuts, all of which drive up the price. Instead, the founders say theyve figured out a way to re-create casein micelles the particles that allow dairy to react the way it does without using any specialized ingredients at all.Its all really common things you could buy at any Whole Foods, Bowman promises, including potato, cassava, cane sugar, and canola or rice-bran oil, and definitely not soy, wheat, GMOs, gums, gels, or stabilizers.

The end goal is to be everywhere, to offer this formula to the masses so that dairy-free milk becomes extremely common to a point where no one thinks twice about it. Really, the vision for the ice cream is if every Burger King has an Impossible Whopper, Steinhart says, theyre going to have a dairy-free shake or cone, and it should definitely be Eclipse.

To borrow the parlance of the tech world, Eclipse is not really an ice-cream company. Its a dairy platform, and it wants to use Eclipse to make anything you might make with cows milk: cheese, sour cream, whatever. But ice cream is the beginning.

Taking another cue from the Impossible Burger introduction, which saw the faux-beef brand partner with a few select chefs around the country before a wider rollout, Eclipse has partnered with a few select ice-cream shops, including Humphry Slocombe in San Francisco and OddFellows in New York. Starting this Friday, you can try it yourself at the shops.

At OddFellows, it will be available in two flavors: the cherry-miso and an olive-oil roasted plum. The texture was a little more accurate than I expected, Mason says. He picked these flavors, he says, because theres something salty about the Eclipse base that is different from the classic milk-and-egg combo. It definitely has a flavor to it toward the end. Youre like, Oh, thats something unique, Mason says. Its pleasant, but you know its not quite what youre used to.

Hes right. Neither flavor tastes exactly as if its made with dairy from a cow. Its difficult to describe, but traditional dairy has a gentle confidence, like a hot high-school quarterback who doesnt even realize how frictionless his whole life will be. But ice cream made with Eclipse doesnt taste exactly like the other vegan ice creams Ive had. As a vegan-ice-cream enthusiast, I have come to expect some kind of seedy base note, a hint of almond, the specific mouthfeel of coconut something vegetal but all of those were missing too. Eclipse is not quite dairy, but its also not not-dairy.

At home, I tried a pint of Eclipses own chocolate flavor, trying to get a sense of what Eclipse ice cream would be like if it werent made by a world-class pastry chef. The chocolate also had the weirdly alluring saltiness I have never before experienced in ice cream. It is unexpected but extremely pleasant. It adds a layer of sophistication, the difference between a candy bar and a chocolate bar with fleur de sel. I dont know if it is quite intentional, but I am into its slightly otherworldly weirdness. Like all ice cream, made with milk or without it, it is perhaps best taken on its own terms. Functionally, though, it is certainly an ice cream: I ate it and felt as though Id had ice cream.

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