All About Ice Cream

Ice cream, America's favorite treat, has been around for a very long time. It's thought that some form of ice cream goes back to 200 B.C. Folk lore says that in the first Century, Roman Emperor Nero commanded his slaves to get ice from the mountains to create his iced mixture with fruit toppings.

An additional kind of ice cream was created by King Tang of China (A. D. 618-97). He mixed ice and milk. From China ice cream was brought to Europe. In the 1200's Marco Polo had brought an ice cream sorbet recipe back with him to Europe from the Far East. The recipe called for the ingredients snow and milk. Ice cream was later imported from Europe to the United States where it was served by Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson to their guests.

In Greater New York, in 1776, the original ice cream parlor was opened. The word ice cream was initiated by the American Colonists. They originally called it "iced" cream and it was eventually shortened to "ice" cream. In 1777 Philip Lenzi, a confectioner, placed the original newsprint ad for ice cream in the New York Gazette.

By the time First Lady Dolly Madison was in the White House from 1809 to 1817, she dished out ice cream to visitors. Ice cream was even served up to immigrants as part of their meal when they reached Ellis Island.

The hand crank ice cream maker was invented in 1846 by Nancy Johnson. Nowadays, ice cream is still made utilizing the basic technique of the hand-crank ice cream freezer. In 1848 a similar ice cream freezer, the Johnson Patent Ice-Cream Freezer was patented. By 1850 ice cream had become a favorite treat. It was not until 1851 that Jacob Fussell's Baltimore Company started to make and market ice cream commercially.

It Is not clear who or just when somebody realized that combining the cream in a small pewter pot inside of a bigger pot full of salt mixed with ice would lower the temperature of the ingredients. The wooden freezer bucket and paddles would clear the path for the larger-scale manufacture of ice cream. Historians differ on when the ice cream cone was formulated. It's been alleged that the ice cream cone was invented in St. Louis, Missouri in 1904 when on July 23 Charles E. Minches concocted making a pastry cone and filling it with two scoops of ice cream. The ice cream cone originally showed up at the St. Louis World's Fair later in the year where there were more than fifty ice cream cone sellers.

Historians also think that before the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, paper and metal cones were being utilized. England was also already marketing edible ice cream cones. A different theory is that before the 1904 World's Fair, an ice cream vendor from New York City had grown sick of customers pilfering his serving dishes, so he invented an ice cream cone in 1896.

In 1926 Clarence Vogt found a method of continuously freezing ice cream for the commercial manufacturing of ice cream. By the 1930's ice cream had a big growth in popularity and many flavors of ice cream and sherbets had become available.

By the 20th Century lots of flavors of ice cream were being sold on a large scale in grocery stores, supermarkets and ice-cream franchises. With the numerous flavors of ice cream available in supermarkets and eateries, vanilla continues to be America's favorite and chocolate is the 2nd favorite flavor of ice cream.