…we all scream for ice cream!
ICE AGES
Which is oldest—ice cream, sherbet, or snow cones? Snow cones. The Chinese were making desserts by mixing snow with juices and fruit pulps 3,000 years ago. Sherbet—or “milk ice”—came next. In the late 13th century, Marco Polo brought a recipe for fruit sherbet from China to Italy, but only a few people knew about it and the recipes became closely guarded secrets.
Historians estimate that sometime in the 16th century, some chef—no one knows who—increased the milk content in the recipe and eliminated the fruit…inventing ice cream in the process.
RICH DESSERT
Iced dessert remained an exclusive (and expensive) upper-class treat for a century. Then, in 1686, an Italian named Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli opened Paris’s first coffeehouse, Café Procope—the first business ever to make ice cream available to the general public.
Other coffeehouses around Europe soon started serving it as well. By the mid-17th century, ice cream could be found in all of the continent’s major cities… and by the end of the century, people were virtually addicted to it. In 1794 Beethoven wrote from Vienna: “It is very warm here, as winter is mild, ice is rare. The Viennese are afraid that it will soon be impossible to have any ice cream.”
Medical term for ice cream headache: spheno pulatine ganglio neuralgia.
ICE CREAM IN THE NEW WORLD
Ice cream arrived in America in the late 1600s, and became popular with many of the Founding Fathers, including George Washington (he ran up a $200 ice cream tab with one New York merchant in the summer of 1790) and Thomas Jefferson (he had his own 18-step recipe for ice cream and is believed to be the first president to serve it at a state dinner). First Lady Dolley Madison’s ice cream parties helped make ice cream fashionable among the new republic’s upper class.
CRANKING IT OUT
But ice cream was still a rare treat. Why? Because there were no freezers in the 1700s. Ice was very difficult—and expensive—to get.
Most ice cream was made using the “pot freezer” method: the ingredients sat in a pot that, in turn, sat in a larger pan of salt and ice. The whole thing had to be shaken up and down by one person while another vigorously stirred it.
What? HOWLER MONKEYS CAN BE HEARD CLEARLY UP TO 3 MILES AWAY.
Over the next 50 years, two developments helped make ice cream America’s favorite dessert:
1. In the early 1800s, “ice harvesting” of frozen northern rivers in winter months, combined with insulated icehouses that sprang up all over the country, made ice—and ice cream—cheap for the first time. By 1810 ice cream was being sold by street vendors in nearly every major city in the United States.
2. In 1846 a woman named Nancy Johnson created the world’s first hand-cranked ice cream freezer. With this invention, ice cream was both affordable and easy to make for the first time. By 1850 it was so common that Godey’s Lady’s Book would comment: “A party without it would be like a breakfast without bread.”
WE ALL SCREAM
By 1900 electricity and mechanical refrigeration had given rise to a huge ice cream industry. And it had become so much a part of American culture that immigrants arriving at New York’s Ellis Island were served a “truly American dish” at every meal…ice cream.
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FOUR BASKIN-ROBBINS FLAVOR FLOPS
Fig Newton
Brassicaseus Beer (root beer and horseradish)
Chile con Carne
Prune Whip
Rarest element on Earth? Astatine accounts for about 1 ounce—total—of the Earth’s crust.