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Ice Cream: The Yankee Doodle Treat
| Article
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18442 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1990 |
1,997 Words |
| Author
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Kay Shaw Nelson
Food and travel writer Kay Shaw Nelson has written for
numerous magazines and newspapers, including Gourmet, House
and Garden, Washingtonian, and the New York Times. The author
of thirteen cookbooks, she most recently published A Bonnie
Scottish Cookbook. |
“I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream.” Does this well-known children's rhyme mean we all love ice cream? You'd better believe we do. The International Ice Cream Association (IICA) estimates that U.S. ice cream producers made 23.15 quarts per person in all of 1987.
Our affection for frozen treats isn't purely a matter of gluttony, however. Ice cream, after all, shouts patriotism and tradition. It is accorded a permanent place of honor at birthday parties and summer picnics. Weddings and anniversaries would not be the same without it. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in 1841, “We dare not trust our wit for making our house pleasant to our friend and so we buy ice cream.”
Ice cream is also big business. It's on the shopping lists of more than 98 percent of U.S. households. The retain value of ice cream and all related products is estimated at approximately $9 billion per year. The industry employs more than 18,500 people, whose annual earnings exceed $400 million.
From East to West
Although Americans did not invent ice cream, we can claim the paternity of ice cream sodas, sundaes, cones, sandwiches, sticks, bars, and floats. Not to mention Eskimo pies, Popsicles, banana splits, and soft ice cream, all in literally hundreds of flavors.
Nobody knows exactly where ice cream came from, but it probably derives from water ices known to the ancient Chinese. They are believed to have passed the art of making chilled fruit drinks to the Indians and Persians, who in turn introduced them to the Near East. The Emperor Nero learned of this delicacy and dispatched special runners to the Apennine Mountains for snow to chill his sherbets, flavored with fruit, nectar, and honey. After the fall of Rome, the Arabs recovered the trade secrets of sherbet making and later taught them to the Sicilians.
When Catherine de’ Medici married Henry II of France in 1533, she introduced the skill of making ices to her new subjects. Several varieties were served at her lengthy wedding celebration and subsequently featured at French court banquets. A hundred years later, Charles I was so titillated by Italian ices that the English monarch enjoined his confectioners never to reveal their secret formulas.
Flavored ices were first served to the Parisian public after 1670
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