Historians do not agree on when or where ice cream was created, but the general consensus is that it was invented in China in the form of sweet ice, possibly as early as 3000 BC. Centuries later, Marco Polo discovered it on his world travels, and he then supposedly took the treat back to Italy, where it was made into something closer to what we now call “ice cream.”
While this can’t be confirmed or denied, it is certain that the ice cream enjoyed in the United States today came from Europe. Thomas Jefferson, who ate ice cream in France, is credited with making it popular in America. The Jefferson Papers Collection at the Library of Congress houses one of the first printed recipes for ice cream, from 1784. It calls simply for cream, sugar and eggs and was made using a machine called the sabottiere or sorbetiere, which looks like a primitive version of today’s hand-cranked ice cream makers.
From there, ice cream became the darling of anyone who had some version of a maker and access to ice. The rich treat had to be cranked and enjoyed right away, because without refrigerators or freezers, there was no means of storing it frozen for any length of time.
In the late 1800s in Cincinnati, Ohio, Louis Charles Graeter turned to ice cream to make a living. He cranked the ice cream in the back room of the bottom floor of his home on McMillan Street and sold it out the front. He used what was known as the “French pot,” a spinning bowl that would throw the sweet mixture against the sides, from where he scraped it as it froze, not much different than the early sabottieire.
Now, almost 150 years later, an ice cream produced by the fourth generation of the Graeter family—in virtually the same manner—is considered by many to be one of the best ice creams in the country. It has gained national notoriety, being highlighted in O! magazine and featured in other publications such as Gourmet, Vanity Fair and Saveur. Mystery writer James Patterson included Graeter’s Ice Cream in one of his thrillers, Honeymoon, in 2005.
Ohio senator Gary Cates used Graeter’s Ice Cream to sweeten the pot, so to speak, feeding it to other senators in order to get a bill on workman’s compensation passed in 2005. “I found that people are a lot friendlier when they’re eating Graeter’s Ice Cream,” Cates said in an article in the Columbus Dispatch.
In Ohio, Graeter’s Ice Cream represents such a part of the fabric of life that it is not uncommon to find obituaries that list the ice cream among the favorite things of the deceased, along with the Cincinnati Reds and the Ohio State Buckeyes.
Graeter’s Ice Cream is no ordinary ice cream, though the flavors certainly sound familiar and it can be found somewhere as ordinary as a supermarket freezer in certain parts of the country. Graeter’s is more than just a pleasant regional ice cream, like Pierre’s of Cleveland with its dozens of flavors or Velvet Ice Cream of Utica, Ohio, even though Velvet is also family owned and almost as old as Graeter’s. And Graeter’s is different than the new breed of artisan ice creams, such as Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams in Columbus, with its far-out flavors. The flavors at Graeter’s have changed little in the last seventy-five years.
Graeter’s is, by and large, exactly the same as it was when Louis Charles hand stirred it in the original French pots. There’s a lot to be said for a product that has maintained such consistency and such a loyal following for that length of time. And the company is still 100 percent family owned, no small feat considering that less than 3 percent of family businesses survive into the fourth generation.
The company’s history encompasses a story of love and division, bickering and communing, but always with attention to one of the most irresistible products in America: its ice cream.
How sweet is that?