Ice cream as we know it today is a relatively recent invention. The first beginnings of this kind of foodstuff are lost in history, but the Roman emperor Nero probably feasted on an ancestor of ice cream—snow mixed with honey and fruits—around 62 A.D. History tells us that water ices (frozen punches) were made in Italy in the fifteenth century. From water ices, recipes that contained milk or cream were eventually developed. In the seventeenth century, a French ice cream maker in the employ of King Charles I of England was paid to keep his recipe a royal secret. In 1769 The Experienced English Housekeeper printed the first known recipe for “cream ice.” French and English cookbooks published in the early 1770’s contained recipes for “cream ices” and “butter ices.”
The first record of ice cream in America dates from 1700 when Governor Bladen of Maryland served it to some of his guests attending a dinner party. Philip Lenzi, a confectioner from London, made ice cream and advertised it for sale in New York City beginning in 1774. Ice cream remained an expensive delicacy, available only in confectioneries and cafés, for many years. Recipes were still a carefully guarded secret.
In 1848 the first U.S. patent was granted for a revolving hand-crank freezer with a dasher, one of the first to be made commercially in the United States.
It was not until 1851 that ice cream became available on the wholesale market. Jacob Fussell of Baltimore added ice cream to his line of wholesale dairy products, built the first ice cream manufacturing plant in Baltimore, and later expanded his business to Washington, D.C., New York and Boston.
Ice cream did not become really well known until the twentieth century, when mechanical refrigeration and changing economic conditions made it available to a wider market. The industry has made great strides in the last eighty-odd years. In 1904 the ice cream cone was introduced at the St. Louis World Fair. It wasn’t until as recently as the 1940’s that carry-home ice cream from grocery and candy stores gained in popularity, and soft ice cream appeared in drive-in sales outlets.
Today the amount of ice cream made at home is minuscule compared with the amount commercially produced. This book is dedicated to that fraction produced at home. May it melt slowly.