The original cool: ice cream

The quintessential treat of summer is a frozen one.

Nowadays, there are many variations on this theme, what with global eating trends and dietary restrictions being so common. Originally though, everyone knew it as “cream ice” or “iced cream.” 

No one knows for sure exactly where it was first served, but ice cream has had universal appeal going back as far as the third century B.C. in China.

There are a few legends, all involving famous people, recounting how ice cream’s popularity grew. You can take your pick:

• Emperor Nero of Rome had snow brought from the Apennine Mountains and had a sorbet-style dessert made with honey and wine
• Marco Polo brought frozen desserts to Italy (the first gelato?). Then, Catherine de Medici took them to France when she married the Duke of Orleans
• King Charles I of England gave his royal ice cream maker a lifetime pension to ensure his recipe was kept secret

Frozen foods were a challenge before refrigeration. If you didn’t live where there was ice or snow year-round, you had to cut pieces from a lake or pond and store it in straw-lined ice houses or in the ground.

The first ice cream makers, called churns, used salt to help keep the product frozen. (This is a great science demonstration of an endothermic reaction for the kids, with a delicious reward at the end.)

It wasn’t until the 17th century that ice cream became generally known in Europe, but it was another 200 years before the middle classes would afford it.

The first ice cream stand was outside a tube station in London in 1851, using an ice well with chunks of ice to keep the product frozen. 

Agnes Marshall, a cookbook author and teacher in England, did much to popularize ice cream. She even invented the cone, or “cornet” as she called it. Her first ones were made with almonds and baked in the oven (like tuiles).

In America, it was the Quakers who arrived with ice cream recipes in 1745. It was popular in the colonial era, culminating with being featured at the World’s Fair in 1904 and being served in cones.

Once refrigeration became more affordable, ice cream exploded as a treat worldwide. As with most foods, variety became an added motivator for people to enjoy it more often. Soft serve ice cream added more air to the mix, making it more profitable as well as lighter. 

Now, you can get gelato in many more places than Italy, and flavours of ice cream have gone far beyond chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla.

Local ice cream parlours offer waffle cones, ice cream sundaes and even specialties like affogato (ice cream with a shot of espresso poured over it – what’s not to like with that combination?) 

But perhaps you want to be a piece of history, and contribute to the original ideas out there?

With all our delicious fresh fruit, you might just want to throw some softened ice cream in a large bowl and mix in pieces of your favourites.

Feel free to add a bit of chopped chocolate or toasted nuts or coconut or caramel sauce… you get the idea.
Re-freeze and voilà, your customized flavour. 

If you’d like to try a recipe from scratch, here are a few places to start. The “no churn” recipes don’t require an ice cream machine, just a loaf pan or Tupperware-style container to put in the freezer.

Of course you can always add your own touch of flavour as well (like cinnamon berry or vanilla almond or…)

Egg free vanilla recipe 

Vegan coconut recipe

Berry no churn recipe

Exotic gourmet flavours –

Authentic gelato (with instructions either by hand or machine) 

So, if you’re having a tough day, stop and breathe. Then remember, as Charles Schultz said:

Life is like an ice cream cone
you have to lick it one day at a time.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.