Ice Cream

 ICE CREAM HISTORY

Ice cream was invented in China when someone packed a soft milk-and-rice mixture in snow. The founder of the AD 618–907 T'ang dynasty, King T'ang of Shang, kept 94 "ice men" on hand to lug ice to the palace to make a dish made of koumiss (heated, fermented milk), flour, and camphor.

During a state banquet hosted by Charles I of England, the monarch's French chef, Gerald Tirsain, developed  a delicious new variation of flavored snow. Milk, cream and eggs were added to make it much creamier and sweeter than any other iced dessert. The guests were delighted, as was the king who summoned the cook, and had him promise to keep the recipe for his frozen cream secret. The English monarch wanted the delicacy only at the Royal Table and offered him £500 a year to keep it that way.

The Sicilian chef Francesco Procopia dei Coltelli  (1651 - 1727) perfected the making of ice cream.
In 1686 he opened Le Procope, the first café in Paris. Here after being considered a dessert for royalty alone, water ices, cream ices and sorbets were made available to the general public for the first time.

Due to the popularity of Le Procope in Paris, many imitators were setting up similar establishments. By 1706 there  were around 250 icemakers in the French capital.

Mrs Mary Eales published the first English recipe for ice cream in 1718. Whilst the continentals favored water ices, the British had a preference for their iced desserts being made with cream.

Ice cream was introduced to the United States by Quaker colonists who brought their ice cream recipes with them.

The first commercially made ice cream went on sale in New York in 1786. The New York Post Boy, of June 8, 1786, made this announcement: "Ladies and gentlemen may be supplied with ice cream every day at the City tavern by their humble servant, Joseph Cowe.”

On June 13, 1789, George Washington became the first US president to eat ice-cream, when he was served the dessert at a dinner party given by Mrs. Alexander Hamilton. He liked it and bought a "cream machine for making ice" of his own.

Photo: John Gauder,. http://www.historicfood.com/ices.htm

George Washington spent $200 on ice cream during the summer of 1790, which equals roughly $5,100 in today's money.

The first ice-cream stall in Britain is thought to have opened at London's Charing Cross station in 1851.

In the 19th century, ice cream was sold in small quantities called a 'penny lick' wherein a small amount of ice cream was placed onto a licking glass, which the customer would lick clean and return. The glass was not washed between customers and questions of hygiene led Italo Marchiony to introduce a pastry cup in New York City in 1896. The penny lick was banned in London three years later because of  concerns athe spread of disease, particularly tuberculosis. Come the 20th century, the waffle ice cream cone displaced the penny lick.

19th century penny lick glasses. By Linda Spashett Storye_book

Laws forbidding the sale of sweets and delicacies on Sunday prompted William Garwood to invent the ice cream sundae in Evanston, Illinois in 1874. A mixture of ice cream and fruit coated with jam or syrup it could be served on the Sabbath with no fear of the law being broken.

The ice cream soda was invented in 1874, when Robert N. Green ran out of cream for drinks made with cream, flavored syrup and soda water. Green substituted ice cream, and the ice cream soda was born.

Alfred Cralle of Pittsburgh patented an ice cream scooper on February 2, 1907. He was the first person in Pittsburgh to receive a patent. His basic design is still used today.

The ice cream cone was popularized at the 1904 St. Louis World Fair. On a hot day Ernest M. Hamwi, a pastry baker of Syrian origin, rolled up some of his Zalabia pastry and sold the cones to an ice cream concessionaire in an adjoining booth, who was running out of paper cups. There were around fifty ice cream stands at the Fair and a large number of waffle shops and many of them started using cones. Some wits called it the "World's Fair Cornucopia."

The Hot Fudge Sundae was created at C.C. Browns, a new ice cream parlor on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles in 1906. Fudge originated in the previous century when the sugar recrystallized after a mistake made during the manufacture of toffee.

Thomas Wall solved the problem of slow summer trade at the family’s butcher business in 1913 by diversifying into ice cream. The First World War meant that his idea was not properly implemented until 1922 when production of Wall's Ice Cream commenced at a factory in Acton, London.

In 1930, Cadbury's started producing a smaller version of the standard Flake bar especially for ice cream cones. These were marketed under the name 99 Flake. The origins of the name are uncertain. One claim is that a Stephen Arcari invented the treat in the 1920s, using Cadbury flakes that he’d break into two, and named it after the address of the family’s shop, 99 Portobello High Street.

A 99 Flake with "monkey's blood" syrup topping By nikoretro - Wikipedia 

When Tom Carvel, the founder of the Carvel brand and franchise, suffered a flat tire in his ice cream truck in Hartsdale, New York during the Memorial Day weekend of 1934 he started serving the melting ice cream to vacationers. Within two days he had sold his entire supply of ice cream and concluded that both a fixed location and soft frozen desserts were potentially good business ideas
Two years later Carvel opened his first soft serve ice cream shop at the same site where his truck broke down.

During World War II, U.S. heavy bomber pilots would make ice cream by strapping buckets of ice cream mix to the rear gunner’s compartment before missions. The cold and turbulence of the flight would churn the custard into ice cream by the time they landed.

Reuben Mattus introduced Häagen-Daz onto the American market in 1959. He chose the name because he thought a  Danish sounding name would suggest a superior, exotic product to higher-income customers.

The Control of Noise (Code of Practice on Noise from Ice-Cream Van Chimes Etc.) Order 1981 came into effect on December 21, 1981 in the UK. It was a revision of an existing code of practice that had been in place since 1972. This revision updated the regulations related to ice cream van chimes, including limiting ice-cream vans to no longer than four seconds of chimes at a time. maintaining the 4-second limit and introducing additional recommendations, avoiding playing chimes before 9 am and after 9 pm and no playing chimes within 50 meters of a hospital or school.

ICE CREAM RECORDS

The largest ice cream cone measured 3.08 metres from top to bottom and was achieved by Norwegian ice-cream maker, Hennig Olsen in July 2015. The ice-cream consisted of 40 litres of homemade lingonberry jam and 1,080 litres of vanilla ice cream and 60 litres of chocolate - the biscuit cone alone weighed a huge 75 kg.

Joey Chestnut won the 2014 World Ice-Cream Eating Championship with 15 pints in six minutes.

ICE CREAM FLAVORS

Venezuelan ice cream shop Heladería Coromoto has an impressive 860 flavors in store. This venue has been featured in The Guinness Book of World Records for having the most flavors.

Vanilla is the most popular flavor of ice cream. It takes up around 25% of overall sales with chocolate coming in a distant second.

In Japan fish flavored iced cream is served. Known in Japanese as saury, the strong flavor of this saltwater fish is drowned in brandy to mask the potent scent.

There is an amusement park in Tokyo that offers raw horse meat flavored ice cream.

The Japanese also have cactus, charcoal, and octopus flavored ice cream.

You can buy hummus flavored ice cream in Israel.

FUN ICE CREAM FACTS

National Ice Cream Day is celebrated on the third Sunday in July, in the United States.

June is the month that the most ice cream is produced.

About 10.3 percent of all the milk produced by US dairy farmers is used to make ice cream.

Allan Ganz holds the world record for the longest career as an ice cream man.  At the age of 10, he joined his dad's ice cream truck and starting selling with him tin the cities of Everett and Malden, Massachusetts, near Boston. After a 22-month stint in the armed forces, he returned to selling with his father and hasn't stopped serving since.

Fidel Castro was obsessed with ice cream, once consuming 18 scoops in one sitting. His love for ice cream inspired him to implement a fully fledged dairy industry in Cuba and he even opened his own ice cream parlor.

An ice cream parlor in Davo City, Philippines uses crocodile eggs instead of regular eggs in its recipe.

 The "ice cream" you see in ice cream adverts is often mashed potatoes because they will not melt during production.

Americans consumed about 1.53 billion gallons of ice cream and frozen products during 2011.

Worldwide, around 15 billion litres (3.3 billion gallons) of ice-cream are consumed every year, enough to fill 5,000 Olympic swimming pools.

New Zealanders eat more ice-cream than any other nation, an average of 28.4 litres per person per year.

It takes an average of 50 licks to eat a single scoop ice-cream cone.

It's illegal to carry ice cream in your back pocket in Kentucky.

The medical term for ice cream headaches is sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia.

Ice cream actually makes your body warmer because of its fat content.

The temperature of ice cream is typically about -16°C when it's served.

Most ice cream is about 50% air.

Sources Policymic.com, Daily Express, Food For Thought by Ed Pearce