National Ice Cream Day
Did you know July 18 was National Ice Cream Day? Personally, I celebrate it every day! In 1984, President Ronald Reagan proclaimed July as National Ice Cream month and established National Ice Cream Day as the third Sunday in July. The “holiday” got me wondering...When was ice cream created? Who brought this delicious treat to us? How did they make it? How has it evolved?
There are claims that ice cream was invented thousands of years ago in the Persian Empire. People would hike to the mountain tops to gather snow and then store it in underground chambers, known as yakchal. The “ice cream” treat was a bowl of snow with concentrated grape juice poured over it. Other claims point to the Tang Dynasty around 697AD, where salt and ice was used to freeze dairy. Among others, I’ve also seen credit given to Naples, Italy and Antonio Latini, who was born in 1642, for the first milk-based sorbet.
Ice cream came to the U.S. with the Quaker colonists. Historical records document several founding fathers, such as Ben Franklin, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, enjoyed ice cream. Thomas Jefferson’s recipe, which is in the Library of Congress, lists the same ingredients I use to make vanilla ice cream. Although I use a modern ice cream maker rather than a pot freezer. In the 1830’s, Augustus Jackson, an African American confectioner and former chef to the White House, created multiple ice cream recipes and pioneered some of the modern manufacturing methods. In 1843, the first U.S. patent for a small-scale hand-cranked ice cream freezer that used salt and ice for cooling was granted. The first ice cream truck hit the streets in 1920.
I was surprised by the variety of methods of making ice cream. However, I found the method used by WWII American fighter pilots based in the South Pacific most interesting. According to Wikipedia they attached pairs of 5 gallon cans to their aircraft. The cans were “fitted with a small propeller, this was spun by the slipstream and drove a stirrer, which agitated the mixture while the intense cold of high altitude froze it. B-17 crews in Europe did something similar on their bombing runs as did others.”
Of course the ice cream cone was popularized at the 1904 World’s Fair right here in St. Louis, but credit for the first mention of a cone is given to Mrs. A.B. Marshall in her 1888 Book of Cookery. Her cone recipe describes cornets made from almonds and baked in an oven.
Ice cream, frozen custard, sorbet, frozen yogurt, gelato...it’s all good! I, for one, am glad I don’t need to embark on a long trek to harvest ice or snow in order to make ice cream. While it can be fun to make it the “old fashioned” way, it’s hard to beat the wonderful variety of flavors and super creamy ice cream scooped out at local shops.
So, grab a friend and give a little boost to our local economy. Make a trek to your favorite ice cream shop and join me in continuing the celebration throughout the year!
Karen Schuster, CEO