© 2008 Filipe Fortes [CC-BY-SA-2.0] via Wikimedia Commons
Campioni del Mondo del Gelato 2006
Ann Chandonnet
T
he ice cream industry of today has
grown by leaps and bounds, and some
of it is a far cry from the olden days
when ingredients for making ice cream
included whole eggs, milk, and sugar,
laboriously cranked in the freezer. The
original method was to put the mixture into a
covered pot, and twirl it in a larger pail of ice
and salt. To produce a smooth rather than
granular mixture, cooks had to regularly
shake the mixture and stir the frosty outer
edge into the center. It was a tricky, laborious
maneuver and having ice cream was an
occasional family treat. Today, ice cream is
often mass produced using synthetic
ingredients and US manufacturers are not
required by law to list the additives used in
the manufacture of their product.i
Popular Anthropology Magazine 2013 Vol4 No2
She worked as a feature writer for The Anchorage
Times for 10 years and became the cops and courts
reporter of the Juneau Empire. Chandonnet's Gold
Rush Grub (University of Alaska Press, 2005) won
an Outstanding Book award from the American
Association of School Librarians.
Americans today devour an average of a
pint of ice cream a week. That's quite a
record for a dish that was once served
only to Roman emperors and the very
wealthy. It is believes that in the time of
Nero, slaves ran from the Alps carrying
backpacks of ice and snow, and juices
were added to yield a kind of sherbet. ii In
The American Heritage Cookbook (1969),
however, Helen McCully opines that
"water ices" were invented by the
Chinese 3,000 years ago, and brought to
the West by Marco Polo. Alexandre
Dumas notes that ices were unknown in
France until about 1660, when a
Florentine named Procope first served them
at his café-which still exists on the rue de
l'Ancienne-Comedie in Paris. Dumas gives a
recipe flavored with citron flowers in his
Grand Dictionnaire de cuisine (1873).
The taste for elegant iced drinks and desserts
travelled from Europe to the American
Colonies. In the sixteen hundreds, Virginians
cut ice from ponds and lakes in winter and
stored it in caves and cellars. Ice houses were
found to be more efficient than cellars;
sawdust insulated the large blocks. By the late
seventeen hundreds, ice was being sold in
Philadelphia and Baltimore. Perhaps the most
famous hostess associated with ice cream
was Dolley Madison, wife of US President
James Madison, who served Strawberry Ice
Cream at the White House on March 4th,
Ann Chandonnet
50
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Ice Cream
Ann Chandonnet is a poet, food historian and
former journalist. She grew up on a farm in
Massachusetts, earned her master's degree in
English at the University of Wisconsin Madison
and then lived four years in the Bay Area and 34
years in Alaska.
© 2005 Klara Kim [CC-BY-SA-2.0] via Wikimedia Commons
Gelato at Fennochio’s, Nice, France
1813.iii But the dish also brought raves at the
tables of George Washington, Alexander
Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson. Slaves did
the hard work.
According to the cooking journals of Claude
Monet, Banana Ice Cream was a favorite
dessert at Christmas lunch at Giverny.iv It was
usually molded into a sugarloaf, and served
after the flaming Christmas pudding.
Following the ice cream, coffee was served in
the studio-drawing room, with brandies and
liqueurs after that.
Favorite flavors of the eighteenth-century
included peach and coffee. Some recipes were
simply crushed ripe fruit, sugar and cream.
Others included eggs and/or gelatin, both of
which helped smooth the texture of the
finished result. Ice creams were often molded
into shapes, ranging from wedges of
Parmesan to roses to bunches of asparagus
served on plates. Ice cream was otherwise
presented in glasses with handles.
Farmers generally stored their own ice in ice
houses, and children learned to wield an ice
shaver and create this summertime treat.
The average person was enabled to whip up
ice cream after Nancy Johnson of Philadelphia
invented and patented a cranked ice cream
freezer in 1843.v By the late nineteenth
century, refrigeration plants were operating.
Upscale kitchens contained ice boxes, which
were small, insulated cupboards serviced
from an outside door by ice wagons. These
were gradually replaced by stand-alone ice
chests, the forerunners of the electric
refrigerator introduced in the early twentieth
century. As soda fountains became popular,
and especially during Prohibition in the
United
States,
ice
cream
consumption boomed. Ice cream
stands, ice cream served in the
Pacific during World War II and
packaged ice cream were steps
on the way to today's frozen
yogurts and premium brands.
Page
51
The history of ice cream is intertwined with
the history of ice harvesting, ice houses and
© 2008 Pinguino [CC-BY-SA-2.0] via Wikimedia Commons
Plastic Parfait Sample, Osaka, Japan
the ice chest. In the early nineteenth century,
Russians harvested blocks of ice on a large
pond in their colonial capital, Sitka, and
shipped it to San Francisco where it was
used to preserve oysters. Ice was
occasionally harvested from ice bergs, too.
Maine provided ice to southern ports like
Charleston.
Popular Anthropology Magazine 2013 Vol4 No2
Ann Chandonnet
i
US Food and Drug Administration. 2010. “Overview of Food
Ingredients, Additives & Colors International Food Information
Council (IFIC) and U.S. Food and Drug Administration”.
http://www.fda.gov/food/ingredientspackaginglabeling/foodadditi
vesingredients/ucm094211.htm#qalabel
ii Avey,
Tori. 2012. “Explore the Delicious History of Ice Cream”.
PBS. http://www.pbs.org/food/the-history-kitchen/explore-thedelicious-history-of-ice-cream/
iii
PBS. 2013. “Timeline: Dolley Madison’s Life”.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/timeline/
dolley/
Joyes, Claire; Jean-Bernard Naudin. 1990. Monet’s Table:
The Cooking Journals of Claude Monet. Simon & Schuster.
iv
v The Old Farmer’s Almanac. 2013. “The History of Ice Cream:
Who Invented it?” http://www.almanac.com/content/history-icecream-who-invented-it
Page
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© 2010 kochtopf.twoday.net/stories/coupe-daenemark-coupe-denmark/ [CC-BY-SA 2.0]
via Wikimedia Commons
Popular Anthropology Magazine 2013 Vol4 No2
Ann Chandonnet