I Scream! You Scream! We all Scream for Ice Cream! by Catherine Castle

Image from Wikimedia commons

 

July is National Ice Cream Month and, before it’s gone, I thought I’d share a bit about the history of America’s favorite desserts—well at least one of my favorites. I mean who doesn’t love ice cream. This dessert has a world history. In India it’s kulfi. In Italy, gelato. In Japan, mochi. Every country has its own spin on the frozen dessert Americans call ice cream.

 Ice cream has been a favorite dessert down through the ages. According to the International Dairy Foods Association, the origins of ice cream date back to the second century B.C. but no particular persons can be attributed to this date. However, several prominent historical figures such as Alexander the Great, who ruled from 336 B.C to 323 B.C, and Nero Claudius Caesar, who reigned from 54  A.D to 68 A.D, are credited with consuming iced beverages and iced confections made of snow. Alexander was reputed to enjoy snow and ice flavored with honey. Caesar frequently sent runners into the mountain for snow which he flavored with fruits and juices.

 I don’t know about you, but I ate snow ice cream when I was a child, flavored with milk and sugar. My mother always made a batch with the first big snowfall, until the government said it was no longer save because of chemical fallout from the atmosphere. Such a shame since snow ice cream is a real treat.

 In earlier times, ice cream and ice cream-like desserts were mostly reserved for tables of the wealthy. After all, not everyone could send runners to the mountains to fetch ice in the summer. Nor did everyone have access to ice houses that required frozen water to create the delicacies. Some of the lucky people who enjoyed this frozen dessert included Marco Polo who brought a sherbet-like recipe from the Far East back to Italy. This sherbet-like recipe developed into something that resembled our ice cream around 1600, which was about the time that England discovered ice cream.  "Cream Ice," as it was called, appeared regularly at the table of Charles I during the 17th century. The Italian Catherine de Medici is reputed to have introduced France to similar frozen desserts in 1553 when she became the wife of Henry II of France.

Ice cream didn’t officially reach The New World until the 1700s. In 1744 ice cream was mentioned in a letter written by a guest of Maryland Governor William Baden. By the 1700s ice and ice cream recipes began to show up in cookbooks.  The desserts were often served in special molds shaped like animals, fruits or vegetables. Records from a New York merchant showed that President George Washington spent approximately $200 for ice cream during the summer of 1790. He apparently enjoyed the confection at his home in Mount Vernon as well, since an inventory after his death showed “two pewter ice cream pots.”  Other early presidents also enjoyed ice cream. Thomas Jefferson supposedly had an 18-step recipe for an ice cream delicacy similar to baked Alaska. He also had several ice houses large enough to hold up to 62 wagons of ice. At President Madison’s second inaugural banquet in 1813 his wife served a strawberry ice cream creation. President Lincoln had a sweet tooth for ice cream as well. He and his wife hosted strawberry parties, before and during his presidency, that featured fresh strawberries, cake and ice cream

Until the 1800s when insulated ice houses were invented, ice cream was a rare treat for those who weren’t wealthy. As technological advances were made and mechanical refrigeration became common, so did the manufacture of ice cream. Today, according to the International Dairy Foods Association, the annual production of frozen dairy items in the United States alone is more than 1.6 billion gallons.

Ice cream is a favorite dessert across the globe, but often it doesn’t resemble our American confection. Gelato, an ice cream variety with less fat, more sugar and less air than other frozen desserts, is popular in Italy. In Turkey they serve an elastic stretchy ice cream called dondurma. Street vendors play with the ice cream before serving it to customers. Japan’s ice cream is called Mochi and is served as a small ball of ice cream surrounded by a sticky rice cake. Halva is served in Israel and is a sesame flavored, compact honey-like candy.  In Iran you’ll find ice cream served over pasta, flavored with rose water, lime juice,  and pistachios.   In Germany vanilla ice cream is run though a pasta machine to create a spaghetti shape, then drizzled with strawberry sauce to mimic tomato sauce and topped with coconut flakes, shredded almonds or shaved white chocolate.  Philippine’s sorbetes is a cheese flavored ice cream made with coconut milk and served in a bread bun. Malaysia and Singapore serve shaved ice topped with cooked red beans and evaporated  milk. India’s Kulfi is similar to our ice cream, but denser. It is served molded into a roll on a Popsicle stick topped with pistachios.

I don’t know about you, but after reading about the world’s ice cream varieties, I think I’ll stick the hundreds of variety available in the United States. My favorites are chocolate anything, black raspberry, butter pecan, pineapple, dreamsicles on a stick, soft serve… Well you get the idea. I love ice cream.

What about you? What’s your favorite flavor? Do you buy it or make it at home?

About the Author

 

Multi-award winning author Catherine Castle loves writing. Before beginning her career as a romance writer she worked part-time as a freelance writer. She has over 600 articles and photographs to her credit, under her real name, in the Christian and secular market. She also lays claim to over 300 internet articles written on a variety of subjects and several hundred poems. In addition to writing she loves reading, traveling, singing, theatre, quilting and gardening. She’s a passionate gardener whose garden won a “Best Hillside Garden” award from the local gardening club. She writes sweet and inspirational romances. You can find her award-winning Soul Mate books The Nun and the Narc and A Groom for Mama, on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Follow her on Twitter @AuthorCCastle, FB or her blog.