Kind of ice-cream van with foreign articles on (7)
I believe the answer is:
vanilla
'kind of ice-cream' is the definition.
I can't tell whether this definition defines the answer.
'van with foreign articles on' is the wordplay.
'with foreign articles' becomes 'illa' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'on' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'van'+'illa'='VANILLA'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for vanilla that I've seen before include "Pods to flavour, ice-cream, say" , "Seed pod used to flavour food" , "Without any extras - all vain (anag)" , "Commonplace - flavouring" , "Common flavour for ices" .)