Even Our Ancestors Enjoyed Ice Cream!

Yesterday, Sunday, July 16th, is probably not a date that you had circled on your calendar, unless, of course, there was a birthday in your family or in your circle of friends. So, in case you missed it, yesterday was National Ice Cream Day, giving us a perfect opportunity to celebrate a favorite summer treat that was likely enjoyed by most of our ancestors as well as by most of us!

St. Louisans have grown up hearing that the ice cream cone was invented at our World’s Fair in 1904, but the history of ice cream goes back to a much earlier time. We know that iced drinks and desserts were among the treats served to nobles in Mesopotamia around 4000 B.C., when they ordered ice houses to be built on the banks of the Euphrates River. The Tang dynasty in China (618–907 A.D.) enjoyed a sweet drink made from buffalo or goat’s milk, thickened with flour. Camphor, an aromatic resin, was added to enhance the flavor, and then it was frozen in pools of ice. Snow, brought down from the mountains, was used in Greece to cool wine, and the Roman emperor Nero “enjoyed iced refreshments laced with honey.” In fact, our word “sherbet” comes from the Arabic word “sharbat” that described a variety of fruit-flavored sweet drinks chilled with ice or snow. Vikings made a chilled dish called “skyr” from fresh cheese and skimmed milk, rather like a yogurt. In India, workers brought ice from the mountains for fruit sherbets and an ice cream-like treat called “kulfi,” frozen in metal molds and still eaten in great quantities today. (Photo above: "Randolph Smith Lyon, Mildred Frances Lyon, Mrs. Montague Lyon, Montague Lyon Jr. eating ice cream cones at the 1904 World's Fair, Wikimedia Commons, public domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Randolph_Smith_Lyon,_Mildred_Frances_Lyon,_Mrs._Montague_Lyon_(Frances_Robnett_Smith_Lyon),_Montague_Lyon,_Jr.,_eating_ice_cream_cones_at_the_1904_World%27s_Fair.jpg"

Frozen water, sweetened and eaten as a dessert, likely reached Italy in the early 1600s, based on new scientific knowledge (although known by the Arabs for a few hundred years) that if you placed your edible ingredients in a container, set it in a mixture of ice and salt, and stirred regularly, you’d create something creamy and delicious. The first written record we have of ice cream in Europe was in 1671, when it was noted that King Charles II in England served ice cream to a few lucky nobles at a banquet. Most accounts indicate, though, that the monarch was so enamored of the treat that he ate most of it himself.

Ice Cream as We Know It

The French and the Italians are responsible for ice cream in its modern form. A French chemist, Nicholas Lemery, is credited with writing the first sorbet recipe in 1674. In Naples, a man named Antonio Latini, who worked for a Spanish viceroy, seems to have been the first to publish recipes for sorbetto, the Italian version of sorbet, in 1694. Latini also published a recipe for a sorbet made with milk, sugar, and candied fruit, which may be the first “official” ice cream (or as the Italians call it, gelato) recipe. Before too long, the French were making and serving ice cream in Paris, based on the success of another Italian, Francesco dei Coltelli, who opened an ice cream café.

Like so many other things, ice cream came to North America via the colonists. We have records of it being served in colonial Maryland in 1744, and we know that George Washington purchased an early ice cream maker in 1784. Thomas Jefferson, a prolific writer, left a recipe for a French-style vanilla ice cream made with egg yolks, which produced a much creamier texture. Jefferson likely discovered this treat when he was a diplomat in Paris.

Important dates in American ice cream history:

• 1843: First modern ice cream making machine is patented in America by Nancy Donaldson Johnson.
• 1851: First ice cream factory opens in the U.S. in Seven Valleys, Pennsylvania.
• 1874: First ice cream soda is served, probably in Philadelphia.
• 1880: Milkshakes are promoted as health drinks; edible ice cream cups are patented.
• 1881: Ice cream sundaes are served in the Midwest; they are likely created to evade blue laws forbidding selling soda on Sundays; hence, their name.
• 1904: Italian immigrant, Italo Marchiony, brings his patented waffle cone maker to the St. Louis World’s Fair and sells cones filled with ice cream.
• 1923: Popsicles are patented.
• 1930s: Dairy Queen and Carvel introduce soft-serve ice cream to the East and Midwest.
• 1970s: Frozen yogurt enters the market.

(Nancy Donaldson Johnson invented and patented an "artificial freezer" in 1843, which became the foundation of most modern ice cream makers. Nancy's portrait is on a carte de visite, Library of Congress, public domain; her patent is from the U.S. Patent Office, public domain; images displayed side by side at https://invention.si.edu/file/4430.")

As you can see, once our ancestors arrived in America, ice cream was a treat they would have known about and enjoyed. If your family roots go back to an area where early ice cream and sherbet were made, perhaps your connection with ice cream is even stronger. In the here and now, regardless of whether you are a St. Louis devotee of Ted Drewes, an East Coast Carvel lover, or a fan of exotic organic flavors at Fifty Licks in Portland, your ice cream roots likely run very deep indeed! So, go ahead and celebrate National Ice Cream Day, even if it is a bit late. Your ancestors would approve!

"The Cream of Love," c. 1879, lithograph, published by Currier and Ives, New York, Library of Congress photo collection, public domain, https://www.loc.gov/item/91723709/)

Want to Learn More?

“The Extraordinary History of Ice Cream,” Dream Scoops,  https://www.dreamscoops.com/history-of-ice-cream/

“Explore the Delicious History of Ice Cream,” by Tori Avey, 10 July 2012, The History Kitchen, PBS, https://www.pbs.org/food/the-history-kitchen/explore-the-delicious-history-of-ice-cream/

“Who Invented Ice Cream?” by Nate Barksdale, History, 21 April 2023, https://www.history.com/news/where-do-ice-cream-sorbet-frozen-desserts-come-from