To understand the appeal of a concrete, you first must know that in much of the Midwest, custard is not pudding; custard is similar to soft-serve ice cream, but enriched with eggs. Because Ted Drewes Frozen Custard, the estimable St. Louis drive-in, never trademarked the term concrete, it now is widely used by any milk shake maker who wants you to know how thick his is. As Ted Drewes famously serves it, a concrete is a milk shake made with frozen custard blended so thick that the server hands it through the window to a customer with the paper cup that contains it upside down and topless. Nothing spills out. Needless to say, straws are pointless when drinking—or would it be eating?—a concrete.
Ted Drewes, a former tennis pro, began selling custard with a traveling carnival in 1929; it wasn’t until 1959 that his son, Ted Jr., came up with the ultimate product. Pestered by a neighborhood boy named Steve Gamber, who never was satisfied with how thick his milk shake was, the younger Drewes made a shake with no milk whatsoever, just custard and flavoring. He handed it to Gamber upside down. Drewes called it a “concrete” because at the time many St. Louis ice cream shops were selling extra-thick drinks that they called “cement shakes.” As any mason can tell you, concrete contains cement, but it is heavier, denser, and stronger.