The delicious history of ice cream

I REALLY wanted to buy a beautifully hand painted pair of Coalport porcelain ice pails, c1802. An orange ph­eas­ant with golden wings perched on branches blooming with red and gold flowers. Then see panels of deep cob­alt blue containing swirl­ing gold leaves and flower med­allions. On the top of each lid was a pagoda style cottage next to streams and trees. Imari col­ours of iron red, blue and green, with rich gold covering the scrolled han­dles and the twisted branches, were exotic. These porcelain coolers were trad­it­ionally placed on the din­ing-room side­board, the bottom was filled with ice, then cream & fruit were added. [Most pairs of Georgian ice pails sold for $2,500-10,000, sadly for me].

Coalport porcelain ice pails, c1802,
1stDibs New York

And royal porcel­ain fact­ories like Sèvres near Paris produced ice-cream cups and saucers for shops and homes, as wealthy families joined the ice-cream excitement.

This led to me reading histories of ice-cream, the best being Al­fon­so Lopez who explained that cold treats went back to the ancient wor­ld. Chinese people, for example, en­joy­ed a frozen syr­up. By 400 BC, sharbat was a popular Persian treat, featuring syr­ups made from cher­r­ies, quinces and pom­­e­g­ranates cooled with snow. Thus the mod­ern words sh­er­bet, sorbet and syrup. Alexander the Great enjoyed ices sweet­ened with honey in 330 BC. Roman Emp­eror Nero enjoyed cold fruit juices mixed with honey at his ban­quets.

If icy products first ev­ol­ved in Asia, they may have been introd­uc­ed to Europe by Marco Polo after he arrived home from China in 1295 AD with rec­ip­es for flav­oured ices. Chinese dealers procured ice from cold, mount­ain­ous areas, hand­lers packed it with straw to reduce melting and carried it to urban areas. Finally it was stored in icehouses.

The best known British recipe for ice-cream was pub­lish­ed in LadyAnn Fanshawe in the mid 1660s. Presumably Lady Ann, whose husband Richard was Charles II's ambassador to King Phillip IV’s Spanish court, learnt about iced refreshments at the Madrid court. Her ingredients, mace and orange-flower water, became popular. Fruits and herbs, tea or coffee, honey and crumb­led bis­cuits were also  added.The term ice-cream in English first appeared in May 1671, among other elaborate dishes served at Windsor’s Feast of St George.

Ice cream was exclusively for the upper classes when it arrived in Britain

Dream Scoops

The C17th saw ice drinks being made into frozen desserts. With added sugar, sorbet was created. Antonio Latini (1642-92) was working for a Spanish Viceroy in Naples, and cred­ited with being the first per­son to print a sorbetto recipe. And he was responsible for creating a milk-based sorbet, which most culinary historians call the first official ice-cream. In Nap­l­es, cli­m­ate and culture came together and in 1690 a book on sorb­etti app­eared: New and Quick Ways to Make All Kinds of Sorbets With Ease.

Latini's book, 1694
New and Quick Ways to Make All Kinds of Sorbets with Ease

By the C17th private European estates had ice­houses, then large public icehouses were built in cities. In some cities the ice trade was regulated by the authorities, who set prices & penal­t­ies for illegal sales. Then Sicilian Francesco Procopio dei Colt­elli opened a Paris café in 1686, Il Procope. The site became a meet­ing place for noted intellectuals eg Benjamin Frank­lin, Victor Hugo, Napoleon. A perfect com­binat­ion: intell­ec­t­ual soc­ial life and ice-cream! The café introduced gel­ato, the Ital­ian ver­sion of sorbet, to the French public. It was ser­ved in small porc­el­ain bowls resembling egg cups. Thus Procopio became known as the Father of Italian Gelato.

Europe’s growing middle classes discover­ed the pleas­ures of frozen sweets in local shops. Along with sorbetti i.e ices churned during freezing, there were granitas (fruit and ice), and sorbetti con crema (milk added).

An ice-cream recipe book was published in France in 1768: True prin­c­ip­les for freezing refreshments.

Lady of the house, examining the trays of icecream prepared by the household staff.
Valencia 1775

Sorbetiera were Naples street vendors who sold sorbetto. Trav­ellers to Nap­les often remarked on sorb­etto in their scenes of the city’s street life. In 1839 the Count­ess of Bl­essington wrote: The gaiety of the streets of Naples at night was unparall­eled. The ice-shops and cafes were crowded by the beau monde, the portable barr­ows in the streets were surrounded by more ordinary people. Naples alone had  43 legal ice sellers.

Naples street vendor selling sorbetto,

18th century

Al­though the craze soon sp­read to the North American col­onies, it was still an expen­sive lux­ury in the C18th. A New York merchant sh­owed that Pres. George Wash­ington sp­ent c$200 for ice-cream in sum­mer 1790! But the USA was where ice-cream finally became afford­able to the mass­es. In 1843 New Yorker Nancy Johnson in­vented the first hand cranked ice-cream maker that drastically re­duced production time, receiving the first US patent for a small-scale ice-cream freezer. American firms improved on her design and built new mach­ines that lowered production costs. In 1851 Jac­ob Fussell of Baltim­ore Md built the first ice-cream factories!

By mid-C19th, ice-cream saloons were plentiful along New York’s avenues, experimenting with different productions. Parkinson’s on Broadway created pistachio ice-cream. Pat­ent Steam Icecream Saloon, named for its steam-operated freez­ing unit, catered to mid­d­le class women, wives of substantial trades­men, mechanics and art­is­ans. And Salem!

Af­ter America’s Civil War (1861–5), ice-cream’s popularity exp­loded across U.S, with special­ist shops appearing for the middle classes. Their ice-creams, sorbets and sher­berts were still a bit exot­ic: Mrs DA Lincoln produced several edit­ions of pam­phlets, including Frosty Fancies 1898 and Frozen Dainties 1899, pub­lished for the freezer man­ufacturer White Mountain. She used ice-creams made with arrow­root, cornstarch and gelatin, not eggs.

Although American street vendors started selling ice-cream only a few decades after France and the UK, America’s industrial rev­ol­ution had to focus on the re­frigerat­ion issue. So note that in the US, continuous refriger­at­ion became a reality with electrical freezers in 1926.

London ice cream cart

1877

Photo credits: Dream Scoops.