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Ice cream probably evolved from chilled wines and
other beverages, what we might nowadays call "slushies". Around
3,000 years go, the Emperors of China are believed to have
enjoyed
frozen
delicacies
made
from
snow and ice
flavoured with fruit, wine and honey.
In the 4th Century B.C., Alexander
the Great is said to have been fond of iced beverages, and
by 62 A.D., the Roman Emperor
Nero is recorded to have sent fleets of slaves to the Apennine
mountains to collect snow and ice to be flavoured with nectar,
fruit pulp and honey.
Legend has it that the great adventurer Marco
Polo brought back recipes for water ices from China
to Venice (Italy) in the 13th
Century, however since the Persian Empire was already enjoying
frozen fruit juice, teas, wines and liqueurs by then, it seems
more likely that these products spread to Italy via Persia. The
Arabic word charab is thought to be the source
of the Italian word sorbetto, the French sorbet and
English sherbet.
 Another legend says that Catherine
de Medici of
Florence took her Italian cooks and sorbetto recipes with her to
France in 1533 when she married the duke of Orléans, who
later became King Henry II.
Charles I of England is then said
to have purchased the formula for "frozen milk" from
a French chef in the 17th Century. As they spread through the royal
houses of Europe, eggs and cream also began to be added, and the
frozen delicacies came to be known as "cream ices".
However
they arrived, we do know that water ices (sorbets) appeared in
the 1660s in Naples, Florence, Paris
and Spain.
 In
1660 an Italian, Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli, started to sell
cream ices to Paris society from his Cafe Procope,
which still operates today. Decorated frozen desserts became fashionable
- the bombe glacee, parfait, coupe, and mousse.
By
now ice was being commercially harvested from frozen lakes, with
salt added to lower the Freezing Point (and temperature) for more
efficient storage and freezing. Prior to this, the difficulty of
collecting and storing ice had meant that ice cream was an expensive
luxury.
In 1760 "The Compleat Confectioner" cookbook
contained a method for making raspberry ice cream.
The U.S. President's
wife Dolly Madison created a sensation when she served ice cream
as a dessert in the White House at the second inaugural ball in
1812.
 An
American woman, Nancy Johnston, invented and patented
the hand-cranked ice cream freezer (a similar concept to a butter
churn, but with ice and salt packed around the outside) in 1843.
By now, lake-harvested ice was being traded all around the world. The
ice from Wenham Lake, Massachusetts in particular became world-famous
for its clarity, harvested and distributed by the Wenham Lake Ice
Company, founded by Frederic Tudor, who became known as "The
Ice King".
 In
1851, the first ice cream "factory" (using
manually operated churns) was set up by Jacob Fussell (pictured
left) in Baltimore, USA.
The first commercial ice-making machine was patented in Australia
in 1855 by James Harrison. The machine had a 15ft
flywheel and produced over 6000 lbs. of ice per day. Despite this,
international trade in lake-harvested ice continued well into the
1900's.
Further
mechanisation of the ice cream manufacturing process took place
in the 1880s
and
1890s as electrical power was harnessed.
The invention of the homogeniser by August Gaulin (France)
in 1899 allowed a much smoother ice cream texture by micro-fining
fat globules, and development of the brine freezer (1902) permitted
faster freezing.
 At
the St. Louis (USA) World Fair in 1904, a Syrian waffle vendor
named Ernest A. Hamwi (pictured
right) is
credited with introducing the ice cream cone, when he started rolling
waffles into cone shapes for the benefit of an ice cream vendor
in an adjoining booth.
The first circulating brine-chilled mechanical horizontal batch
ice cream freezer, the Miller Globe Horizontal Brine Freezer, was
introduced by Harry H. Miller of
Canton, Ohio, USA, in 1904.
 The "Popsicle" is
said to have been accidentally invented in 1905 by eleven-year-old
Frank Epperson, when fruit-flavoured soda water was left outside
and froze on a particularly cold San Francisco night, with stirring
sticks still in place.
The first home refrigerator was introduced
by General Electric in 1911.
Prohibition in the USA (1919) resulted
in many bars being converted into ice cream parlours, and ice cream's
popularity boomed.
Ice cream novelties as we now know them began
to appear in the 1920s - the first chocolate-coated ice cream
bar, the "I-Scream Bar", appeared in
the USA in 1919 (later re-named the "Eskimo Pie"), and
the first ice cream on a stick was the "Good Humor Bar" (1920,
USA). Both products are still on the market, as is the Popsicle!
Anderson Bros. Mfg. Co. designed and built the
first Eskimo Pie packaging machine in 1924, enclosing the ice cream
bars in a fancy, gold-coloured
foil wrapper.
 In
1926 a continuous scraped-surface freezer was developed by Clarence
Vogt of
Louisville, Kentucky, USA (pictured left). Vogt applied for 15
patents for his "Votator", which revolutionised ice cream
production.
The Cherry-Burrell
Corporation bought
the rights to his design, and began marketing the freezer, opening
the way
for true mass production of ice cream.
In 1935 Gram refrigeration company of Denmark
made the world's
first automatic Ice Bar Freezer.
The Neapolitan Three-Tube Vogt Ice Cream Freezer
was introduced at the U.S. Dairy Exposition in 1956. It was the
first freezer
capable of producing three flavours simultaneously from one machine.
Many
further refinements to
manufacturing
equipment
have
taken
place
since then, but by this stage the basic technology was in place
to produce the ice cream that we know and love today.
- Sources:
International Ice Cream Association and others.
 The
History of Ice Cream in New Zealand ...
 Back to
the Resources page |
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Photo: Sali Mahomet and ice cream cart, ca. 1903.
- Ferrymead Heritage Park.
The
story of an industry that started out having to ship ice all
the way from the East Coast of the United States, but which grew
into a progressive and dynamic extension of the dairy industry,
exporting
product and technology back to the rest of the world.
Photo: Delivery vehicles outside the new Riversdale Dairy
- Snowflake ice cream factory, 1928 (detail).
- Owen Norton collection.
Read about New Zealand's ice cream pioneers, the entreprenurial
businesses, and the many famous and magical Kiwi ice cream brands
that have come and gone
over the
years ...
Much,
much more ... |
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