What’s that about?
Contributed by Marilyn Bennett
Last month on a cold day in January, I attended an ice cream social at the Palmer Toastmasters Club. It was noted that in our society it doesn’t matter what the weather is, we can always enjoy a very cold desert.
This was not always true. Ice cream throughout history was a summer treat that only the rich could afford. Chinese kept winter ice for summer in ice houses and made ice cream from goat's milk. The Mughal emperors of India sent teams of horsemen to bring ice and snow back to Delhi from Hindu Kush.
It is said that Marco Polo came back from the the Far East to Europe with the first recipe for a fruit and milk-based ice cream. Then when Catherine de’ Medici became queen of France in 1533, she took her own recipes with her and had ice cream served for the first time in France at her wedding to the king.
Ice cream finally came to America in the 18th century. The first recorded ice cream social in America was in 1744, when Maryland Governor Thomas Bladen served ice cream for a dinner party. The first ice cream social in the White House was in 1802 with the 3rd U.S. president, Thomas Jefferson. Then in 1813, Dolley Madison served a magnificent strawberry ice cream creation at President Madison's second inaugural banquet at the White House.
Nancy Johnson invented the first hand-cranked ice cream maker in 1843. She then sold the patent to William Young, who marketed the machine as the "Johnson Patent Ice-Cream Freezer”. This is a great item to include in your camper for having that off-grid camping trip with your kids. You only need to bring along your favorite ice cream recipe, ice and rock salt and you’s set.
As a kid, we had a wooden hand-cranked machine and us four kids would take turns cranking until it became too hard to turn, then Dad would finish it off and serve us all ice cold ice cream.
The first patent for the ice cream cone was filed in 1903, but it wasn’t until the next year at the World’s Fair that the idea really caught on.
In 1904 at the St Louis World’s Fair, there were over 50 ice cream vendors with “penny lick” glasses. This was a very small amount of ice cream put on a shallow dish for the customer to lick off. The glass was then returned to the vendor to be cleaned for the next customer. Not the most sanitary system.
Good thing there were also many waffle shops at the fair. There is a big controversy as to which vendor at the fair decided to combine the ice cream with the folded waffle first. However the combination quickly spawned several entrepreneurial businesses.
After the fair, One of the vendors founded the Cornucopia Waffle Co. and then went to the Augusta, GA State Fair and gave away 5000 free ice cream cones to introduce his new product.
Another vendor, a Syrian immigrant went to Coney Island with his cone oven and then brought his parents and three brothers from Syria to help sell cones. While an enterprising gentlemen from New Jersey proceeded to set up several ice cream shops in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Not to be outdone, two brothers from Akron, Ohio started the Premium Ice Cream Cone and Candy Co. and they later also invented one of my childhood favorites - “Cracker Jacks”.
In any case, the ice cream cone became an sensation around America and soon church groups decided to incorporate the cone in their ice cream socials in order to appeal to the children.
Until refrigeration became widespread after World War II, the average person only had ice cream made at home in the bucket or at an ice cream vendor or later the ice cream parlor.
I read a statistic that said that now 10% of all the milk produced in the US is used to make ice cream.
It also stated that the US annual consumption of ice cream is 15 quarts per person. All I can say is that someone is eating part of my portion.
All that being said, it is nice to have grown up in this century where we have cozy homes and businesses. Because of that, we can all enjoy an ice cream cone at our Palmer, Alaska Toastmasters Club Ice Cream Social in January.
