Food For Thought: Summer, Week 5

The joys of ice cream

One of my favorite summer memories is making ice cream with my uncle in Woodstock, New York. He had an old ice cream maker that you filled with ice and rock salt, and then took turns cranking it. It was a hot and humid afternoon, and I remember thinking it was taking forever, but the eventual taste of that fresh, handmade strawberry ice-cream was beyond delicious. So good, I’m still thinking about it almost 30 years later.

It turns out humans have been loving ice cream for a very long time. In the 4th century BCE Alexander the Great ate mountain snow flavored with honey and nectar. Roman Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar (A.D. 54-86) ate his mountain snow flavored with fruits and juices. Emperor King Tang of the Chinese Shang Dynasty (618—907 A.D.) enjoyed flavored snow so much, it is said that he sent 90 men into the mountains to collect more. The Chinese mixed the ice with buffalo milk or rice milk, honey, sweet syrup, and sometimes salt for a refreshing after-dinner treat.

Persian engineers built structures called yakhchāls in the desert to store ice, with some dating back to the 4th century BCE. The yakhchāls typically had a domed shape above ground, with a subterranean storage space and ice pools dug into the earth. The ice kept in these buildings was used to preserve food and make traditional Persian desserts like faloodeh (thin starchy noodles in a semi-frozen sugar syrup with rose water) and sharbat (an iced drink made with fruit, flower, and herb syrups).

But it was in Italy that ice cream truly evolved into what we know and love today. Italian chefs combined recipes from ancient Greece, China, and Arab empires to create new mixes of snow, ice, flavorings, and eventually cream. Legend credits a Sicilian boat builder, Maestro d’Ascia, as having made the first ice cream machine out of wood from his boats. He took snow from Mt. Etna, then added salt to lower the freezing point of the fruit, sugar, and water, making a smooth sorbet.

Italian noblewoman Catherine de Medici, married Henri II, the future King of France, and brought ice cream to other parts of Europe, where “Cream Ice” became a favorite dessert of the nobility. It took another 100 years before ice cream was available to the general public in Europe. In 1686, the Sicilian chef Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli, dazzled Paris when he introduced a recipe blending milk, cream, butter and eggs at Café Procope.

In the US, a confectioner from London named Philip Lenzi, moved to New York City and opened a sweet shop. He took out an advertisement in the New York Gazette on May 12, 1777, that said ice cream would be available at his shop "almost every day." The American love for ice cream took off from there and never slowed down.

President George Washington spent approximately $200 for ice cream during the summer of 1790. President Thomas Jefferson apparently had a favorite 18-step recipe for an ice cream dessert much like the modern-day Baked Alaska. Ice cream was something of a rare, exotic, and elite dessert until around 1800 when insulated ice houses were invented. Manufacturing ice cream on an industrial scale was pioneered in 1851 by a Baltimore milk dealer named Jacob Fussell.

Ice cream even became an edible symbol of keeping up morale during World War II. Each branch of the military tried to outdo each other in serving ice cream to their troops. In 1945, the first "floating ice cream parlor" was built, a concrete barge that could produce ten gallons of ice cream every seven seconds, and was towed behind ships, giving sailors in the western Pacific something to enjoy after the Navy banned alcohol. When WWII ended, dairy product rationing was lifted, and in celebration, relief, and pure indulgence, Americans consumed over 20 quarts of ice cream per person in 1946.

Today the annual production in the United States of frozen dairy products is more than 6.4 billion pounds! While it’s no longer a rare delicacy, it sure remains delicious, in all it’s many forms and permutations. I eat pistachio gelato on hot summer nights and think of my Sicilian ancestors.

In honor of National Ice Cream Month, and the beginning of July, this week’s writing prompts are silly and sweet.