Ice
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Ice Cream History
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French ice cream eaters---then and now.
Above: Parisian cafe scene, ordering ice cream
circa early 19th century, artist unknown.
Below: outside an ice cream shop in old town Nice,
France, 2004.
Ice
Cream History
The French may or
may not have invented our modern version of ice
cream, but they certainly have been involved in
much of this popular dessert's development.
In the USA, a popular flavor is French
Vanilla. According to Wikipedia:
"Bourbon vanilla is the term used for vanilla
coming from former French Indian Ocean islands such
as Madagascar, Comoros, and Réunion, which
was the name of the Bourbon island when artificial
pollination was discovered. Some people regard the
vanilla produced on Réunion Island as the
best quality.
Others regard French
Polynesian vanilla as the best, particularly that
produced on the island of Tahaa.
The term French
vanilla is often used to designate preparations
that actually have a strong vanilla aroma, and possibly
contain vanilla grains, but originates from the
French style of making ice cream custard base with
vanilla beans, cream, and egg yolks."
Wikipedia further reports on the
French ice cream connection: "When Catherine
de Medici married the duc d’Orléans
in 1533, she is said to have brought with her Italian
chefs who had recipes for flavored ices or sorbets.
The first recipe for flavored ices
in French appears in 1674, in Nicholas Lemery’s
Recueil de curiositéz rares et nouvelles
de plus admirables effets de la nature.
Recipes for flavored ices begin
to appear in François Massialot's Nouvelle
Instruction pour les Confitures, les Liqueurs, et
les Fruits starting with the 1692 edition.
Massialot's recipes result in a coarse, pebbly texture.
It was in the 18th century that cream, milk, and
egg yolks began to feature in the recipes of previously
dairy-free flavored ices, resulting in ice cream
in the modern sense of the word. The 1751 edition
of The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy
by Hanna Glasse features a recipe for raspberry
cream ice. 1768 saw the publication of L'Art
de Bien Faire les Glaces d'Office by M. Emy,
a cookbook devoted entirely to recipes for flavored
ices and ice cream.
Ice cream was introduced to the
United States by colonists who brought their ice
cream recipes with them. Confectioners, many of
whom were Frenchmen, sold ice cream at their shops
in New York and other cities during the Colonial
era. Ben Franklin, George Washington, and Thomas
Jefferson were among the elite who regularly ate
and served ice cream. Both Jefferson and Franklin
lived for many years in France.
A passionate gourmet, Jefferson
acquired a stock of standard French recipes for
sauces, fruit tarts, French-fried potatoes, blood
sausages, pigs' feet, rabbit, pigeons, and various
other dishes. Among the most popular of these recipes
at Monticello was this one for vanilla ice cream--written
by Jefferson, with his own recipe for Savoy cookies
to accompany the dessert on the back.
Jefferson's
handwritten ice cream recipe
Glacier
Fenocchio-- Nice, France
It doesn't take long to figure out
why this long-established ice cream shop facing
Sainte Reparate Cathedral is so popular. Its choice
location certainly helps, but what really draws
a crowd is the huge range of home-made ice creams;
70 different flavours are available in total. Old
favourites Cafe Liegeois and Peach Melba feature
alongside more unusual flavours like Comte de Nice
(mandarin ice cream with whipped cream, pine nuts
and candied mandarins) and Negus (six different
chocolate flavours).--(Review:
Yahoo Travel)
Photos
credit
Other
Ice Cream Brands Around the World
Dolly Payne
Madison:
first to serve ice cream at The White House
"Betty Jackson, a black woman
from Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, established a tea
room on French Street in Wilmington, Delaware, where
she sold cakes, fruit, and desserts to wealthy people
for their parties. Her son, Jeremiah Shadd, was
a butcher, well-known for his ability to cure meat.
His wife, known as Aunt Sallie Shadd, achieved legendary
status among Wilmington's free black population
as the inventor of ice cream. The story was that
the butcher Jeremiah purchased Sallie's freedom.
Like other members of her family, she went into
the catering business and created a new dessert
sensation made from frozen cream, sugar, and fruit.
Dolly Madison, the wife of President James Madison,
heard about the new dessert, came to Wilmington
to try it, and afterward made ice cream a feature
of dinners at the White House."
Making
Ice Cream
Photo
credit
Dairy cows
have been selectively bred (throughout history)
to over-produce milk, such that they can produce
sufficient milk for their young and additional milk
for human consumption. This cycle of pregnancy and
milking (nine months pregnant, ten months milking)
is the basis of milk production from dairy cows.
Once the cow has started producing
milk, it is milked continuously for approximately
300 days, after which milk production decreases
and it is necessary for the cow to bear another
calf. , and has led to concerns that this system
may cause undue stress leading to lameness and disease.
Read
more from this Wikipedia entry about the
ethical considerations of milk production here.
Cream is
a dairy product that is composed of the higher-butterfat
layer skimmed from the top of raw milk before homogenization.
In the raw milk, over time, the lighter fat rises
to the top. In the industrial production of cream
this process is accelerated by using centrifuges
called "separators". In many countries,
cream is sold in several grades depending on total
butterfat content. Cream can be dried to a powder
for shipment to distant markets.
Cream produced by cows (particularly
Jersey cattle) grazing on natural pasture often
contains some natural carotenoid pigments derived
from the plants they eat; this gives the cream a
slight yellow tone, hence the name of the yellowish-white
colour cream. Cream from cows fed indoors, on grain
or grain-based pellets, is white.
Wikipedia has more about cream here.
Ice cream
(originally iced cream) is a frozen dessert
made from dairy products such as cream (or substituted
ingredients), combined with flavorings and sweeteners
such as sugar. This mixture is cooled while stirring
to prevent large ice crystals from forming. Although
the term "ice cream" is sometimes used
to mean frozen desserts and snacks in general, it
is usually reserved for frozen desserts and snacks
made with a high percentage of milk fat. Frozen
custard, ice milk, sorbet and other similar products
are often also called ice cream. Governments often
regulate the use of these terms based on quantities
of ingredients.
Before the development of modern
refrigeration, ice cream was a luxury item reserved
for special occasions. Making ice cream was originally
quite laborious. Ice was cut commercially from lakes
and ponds during the winter and stored in large
heaps in holes in the ground or in wood-frame ice
houses, insulated by straw. Ice cream was made by
hand in a large bowl surrounded by packed ice and
salt. The temperature of ingredients was reduced
by the mixture of crushed ice and salt. The salty
water, which is cooled by the ice, is liquid below
the freezing point of pure water. Thus the immersed
container with can make better contact with the
salty water and ice mixture than it could with ice
alone.
Learn
more from Wikipedia about ice cream here.
History
of Ice Cream Making
Iowa
State College Domestic Science students making ice
cream in 1910.
"It is likely that ice cream
was not invented, but rather came to be over years
of similar efforts. Indeed, the Roman Emperor Nero
Claudius Caesar is said to have sent slaves to the
mountains to bring snow and ice to cool and freeze
the fruit drinks he was so fond of. Centuries later,
the Italian Marco Polo returned from his famous
journey to the Far East with a recipe for making
water ices resembling modern day sherbets."
--The History of Ice Cream,
written by the International Association of Ice
Cream Manufacturers (IAICM), Washington DC, 1978.
"Most books are full of myths
about the history of ice cream. According to popular
accounts, Marco Polo (1254-1324) saw ice creams
being made during his trip to China, and on his
return, introduced them to Italy. The myth continues
with Charles I rewarding his own ice-cream maker
with a lifetime pension on condition that he did
not divulge his secret recipe to anyone, thereby
keeping ice cream as a royal perogative."
---Ices: The
Definitive Guide by
Caroline Liddell and Robin Weir,
Hodder and Stoughton, 1993.
Chris Clarke, in his 2004 Royal
Society of Chemistry mongraph "The
Science of Ice Cream",
points out quite correctly that the history of ice
cream is closely associated with the development
of refrigeration techniques and can thus be traced
in several stages:
--Cooling food and drink by mixing
it with snow or ice;
--The discovery that dissolving salts in water produces
cooling;
--The discovery (and spread of knowledge) that mixing
salts and snow or ice cools even further - mid to
late 17th century - the inclusion of cream in the
water ices also evolved around this time;
--The invention of the ice cream maker in the mid
19th century;
--The development of mechanical refrigeration in
the later 19th and early 20th centuries - which
led to the development of the modern ice cream industry.
Nancy Johnson: Inventor of
the hand-cranked ice cream freezer
The first improvement in the manufacture
of ice cream (from the handmade way in a large bowl)
was given to us by a New Jersey woman, Nancy Johnson,
who in 1846 invented the hand-cranked freezer. This
device is still familiar to many. By turning the
freezer handle, they agitated a container of ice
cream mix in a bed of salt and ice until the mix
was frozen. (Wikipedia
has more.)
It is not clear if Ms. Johnson
did or did not have a patent for her invention.
However a similar type of freezer was, however,
patented on May 30, 1848, by a Mr. Young who at
least had the courtesy to call it the "Johnson
Patent Ice Cream Freezer".
About 1926 the first commercially-successful
continuous process freezer was perfected. The continuous
freezer, developed by Clarence Vogt, and later ones
produced by other manufacturers, has allowed the
ice cream industry to become a mass producer of
its product.
Commercial
Ice Cream History
The world's first commercial ice
cream factory was opened in Baltimore, Maryland
in 1851, by Jacob
Fussell, a Quaker dairy farmer. An unstable
demand for his milk led him to mass produce ice
cream. This allowed the previously expensive concoction
to be offered at prices everyone could afford. Fussell
opened ice cream parlors as far west as Texas. Many
were still around well into the 20th century. Fussell
later sold his business to Borden. (Wikipedia)
The first Canadian to start selling ice cream was
Thomas Webb of Toronto, a confectioner, around 1850.
William Neilson produced his first commercial batch
of ice cream on Gladstone Ave. in Toronto in 1893,
and his company produced ice cream at that location
for close to 100 years.
Howard Johnson's
28 Flavors
Image credit
After noticing that his soda fountain
was the busiest part of his drugstore, Johnson decided
to come up with a new ice cream, mostly made in
part from his mother's recipe (although some say
this is untrue). He eventually came up with 28 flavors
and opened a beachfront ice cream stand. According
to Johnson, "I thought I had every flavor in
the world. The 28 flavors became my trademark."
Over the next few summers he added
more beachfront stands, and decided to add hot dogs.
His success was beginning to be noticed by others,
and thus he was able to convince some bankers to
lend him enough money to open a restaurant in Quincy,
Massachusetts. This first Howard Johnson's restaurant
featured fried clams, baked beans, chicken pot pies,
frankfurters, and, of course, ice cream.
In 1929 the restaurant's popularity
received a huge boost from an unusual set of circumstances.
Boston's Mayor Nichols prohibited the planned Boston
production of Eugene O'Neill's play Strange Interlude.
Rather than fight, the Theatre Guild moved the production
to Quincy. The five-hour-long play was presented
in two parts with a dinner break. Howard Johnson's
was the best option available to hungry theatregoers,
and hundreds of influential Bostonians flocked to
the restaurant.
Johnson wanted to expand—but
the stock market crashed in 1929.
In 1932, he persuaded an acquaintance
to open another "Howard Johnson's" restaurant
in Orleans on Cape Cod under one of the nation's
first franchises. Soon there were 17 Howard Johnson's
restaurants and by the end of 1936 there were 39
more franchised restaurants.
By 1939 there were 107 Howard Johnson's
restaurants along East Coast highways generating
revenues of $10.5 million.
In less than 14 years, Howard Johnson
directed a franchise network of over 10,000 employees,
with 170 restaurants, many serving a million and
a half people a year.
When the Pennsylvania, Ohio and
New Jersey turnpikes were built, Howard Johnson
bid on and won exclusive rights to serve the hungry
turnpike multitudes. There were 200 Howard Johnson's
restaurants by the time of the United States's entry
into World War II.---Read
more on Wikipedia
Howard
Johnson restaurant images here
Our
Ice Cream Gallery
Ice cream balloon and on the right a paper ice
cream cone from Mexico
Ice cream eaters,unknown photographer, USA mid 20th
ct.
Ice Cream Fiesta, Mexico City, mid 1950's, photographer
unknown
Ice
cream sign, just off Fjallgatan on Sodermalm.
Stockholm, Sweden
Toy ice cream bicycle vendor
Ice cream van, photographer unknown, mid 1930's
Toy ice cream truck, 1990's USA
Early 20th century comic post card...
caption: "My and Me with a Lone Nickel"
Another early 20th century post card.
In the early 20th century, the
ice cream soda was a popular treat at the soda shop,
the soda fountain, and the ice cream parlor. During
Prohibition, the soda fountain was promoted as an
alternative to the saloon.
Ice
cream card game
In Ice Cream, you have the chance to demonstrate
your business skills by running an ice cream stand.
You have just four days to bring in as many customers
as you can -- will you be the prince of pistachio,
the countess of chocolate... or just a drip? Start
scooping!
"The End" (image
credit)
Learn
More
Chocolate,
Strawberry, and Vanilla: A History of American Ice
Cream by Anne Funderburg. Bowling Green
University Popular Press at (419) 372-7865 or fax
(419) 372-8095.
Paul Dickson, The
Great American Ice Cream Book.
Ice
Screamers (ice cream collectibles collectors
group)
The Ice Screamers is a collectors club founded in
1982. Our members specialize in collecting ice cream
parlor and soda fountain memorabilia. The variety
of items we collect is amazing: from scoops to freezers,
glassware to moulds, ice cream cartons to penny
licks, and much more. Any item with an ice cream
or soda fountain - related theme is a potential
collectible!
Ice
Cream by Wikipedia
Ice Cream History and Science---University of
Guelph
All
about Gelati---Italian style ice cream
