Ice Cream
No one is sure just when ice cream was first made. Water ices were popular in ancient times, especially in the East. The Roman emperor Nero (37-68 a.d.) had slaves bring down mountain snow, which was then flavored with honey and fruit pulp. Marco Polo (1254-1324) brought recipes for water ices from the Far East to Italy in 1295, and Italian water-ice recipes were brought to France by the chefs of Catherine de Medici (1519-1589) in 1533.
At some point, cream was added to the ice and "cream ices" were born. A Sicilian, Francesco Procopio, opened a Parisian cafe in 1670 that served ice cream and sherbet. Ice cream was probably brought to America by early English colonists. George Washington (1732-1799) and Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) were both fond of the dish, and Dolley Madison (1768-1849) popularized it at White House dinners.
Ice cream was a rare treat until the advent of commercial ice houses, which made ice widely available, and the hand-cranked home ice cream maker invented by Nancy Johnson in New Jersey in 1846. Jacob Fussell, a Baltimore, Maryland, milk dealer, established the first large commercial ice cream factory in 1851. Rapid technical developments in the early 1900s and the invention of the continuous freezer in 1925 modernized the ice cream industry.
It is generally agreed that the ice cream soda was originated by Robert Green in 1874 at the semicentennial of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was serving a popular drink made of cream, syrup, and carbonated water. When he ran out of cream one day, he used vanilla ice cream in its place. The resulting ice cream soda was an instant hit.
The ice cream sundae seems to have been born during the 1890s either in Wisconsin or Evanston, Illinois. Since Evanston laws prohibited the sale of sodas on Sunday, soda-fountain operators simply eliminated the soda and served just ice cream and syrup. On the other hand, a Wisconsin retailer named Smithson face the problem of no ice cream deliveries on Sunday by serving less ice cream but adding syrup. Another legend names George Giffy, a Manitowoc soda-fountain operator, who started serving ice cream with chocolate syrup--a dish invented by Two Rivers retailer Ed Berner--on Sundays only. In all versions, the spelling was changed to "sundae" to avoid blaspheming the English word for Sabbath.
A number of claims are made about the origin of the ice cream cone. An Italian immigrant to the United States, Italo Marchiony, apparently made and sold cones as early as 1896; his cone mold was patented in December 1903. The cone became popular after it was invented (or reinvented) at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition in Missouri. A Syrian immigrant, Ernest Hamwi, had a stand at the fair selling zalabia, crisp pastry baked on a waffle iron and served with sugar or syrup. When an ice cream vendor next door ran out of dishes, Hamwi rolled a warm waffle into a cone shape, let it cool and harden, and gave it to his neighbor.
Ice cream served in dishes was on its way out. The ice cream bar covered with chocolate was invented by Christian Nelson in Iowa in 1919 and introduced in 1921 as the Eskimo Pie. In 1920, following Nelson's lead, Harry Burt manufactured an ice cream bar called the Good Humor Ice Cream Sucker. It was Burt's daughter who had the idea to put the messy bar on a stick, like the lollipop. The Popsicle accidentally came into being in 1923 when California lemonade manufacturer Frank Epperson inadvertently left a glass of his product with a spoon in it on a freezing New Jersey windowsill overnight. He christened his frozen discovery the Epsicle--later renaming it the Popsicle--and patented it in 1924.
Today the United States leads the world in ice-cream production and consumption, churning out over 1.5 billion gallons of ice cream and related frozen desserts in 1996. The basic mix for commercial ice cream consists of cream and other dairy ingredients plus sweeteners. The mix may also contain stabilizers, which prevent the formation of ice crystals once the ice cream is frozen. These ingredients are blended in a mixing tank. Then the mix goes to a pasteurizer, where it is heated and held at a certain temperature for a specific period of time to kill harmful bacteria. Next the hot mix goes to a homogenizer, where the milkfat globules are put under pressure and broken into smaller particles to make the ice cream smooth. After homogenization, the hot mix is quickly cooled to about 40°F. Finally the mix is frozen. During the freezing process, blades in the freezer whip and aerate the product, which keeps it from forming a hard, inedible mass. Ingredients such as fruits and nuts are sometimes added after freezing; liquid flavors are added to the mix before freezing. Once the ice cream is made, it is packed into containers. Then it goes to a hardening room, where subzero temperatures further harden the product before shipping.
Soft-serve ice cream, dispensed directly from the freezer without hardening, was invented in 1939. In recent years, other variations on ice cream and related frozen desserts have become popular. These include low-fat and reduced-fat ice cream, once called ice milk. To approximate the texture of ice cream, such products may use fat substitutes such as Simplesse, polydextrose, maltodextrin, cellulose, and various gums. Frozen yogurt is also generally lower in fat than traditional ice cream. Another category of frozen dessert is made from tofu and thus is dairy-free. Yet another category is based on fruit. Sherbet usually contains dairy products as well as fruit juice, while sorbet is usually made from whipped or frozen fruit juice without the dairy products.
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