one of the most spectacularly successful of all the foods based on dairy products, has a comparatively short history. The first ice creams, in the sense of an iced and flavoured confection made from full milk or cream, are thought to have been made in Italy and then in France in the 17th century, and to have been diffused from the French court to other European countries. However, although the French did make some ice creams from an early date, they were more interested in water ices.
The first recorded English use of the term ice cream (also given as iced cream) was by Ashmole (1672), recording among dishes served at the Feast of St George at Windsor in May 1671 ‘One Plate of Ice Cream’. The first published English recipe was by Mrs Mary Eales (1718).
Stallings (1979) has described fully the extant evidence for the early history of ice cream, and has also drawn attention to some of the paradoxical features of this history. One such is that the English, although they were consistently influenced by the French in adopting iced desserts and the techniques for making them, stubbornly kept to their preference for ice cream over the water ices which were more in vogue on the Continent. Another is that, while they preferred ice creams, the English had remarkably few recipes for them. Mrs Eales was a pioneer with few followers; ice cream recipes remained something of a rarity in English-language cookery books (except for two which were translations from the French) until the end of the 18th century. Some authors gave no recipe; while others gave but one (e.g. Hannah Glasse, in editions of her famous book from 1751 onwards, but with Mrs Raffald's recipe of 1769 substituted from 1784). The one notable departure from this pattern was by the little-known Mary Smith (1772), who gave ten recipes for ices, including Brown Bread Ice (which was in fact an ice cream) and Peach Ice Cream (which was really a water ice), thus illustrating the imprecision with which these terms were then used.
As for America, Stallings observes that:
ice cream is recorded to have been served as early as 1744 (by the lady of Governor Blandon of Maryland, née Barbara Jannsen, daughter of Sir Theodore Jannsen, Bart and sister-in-law to Lord Baltimore), but it does not appear to have been generally adopted until much later in the century. Although its adoption then owed much to French contacts in the period following the American Revolution, Americans shared 18th century England's tastes and the English preference for ice creams over water ices, and proceeded enthusiastically to make ice cream a national dish. In 1900, an Englishman, Charles Senn, would write: ‘Ices derive their present great popularity from America, where they are consumed during the summer months as well as the winter months in enormous quantities.’ The enormous quantities of which he wrote were of ice cream.
This phenomenon has had a curious side effect in Britain and on the Continent. In our own century the term ice cream came to mean, for many people on both sides of the Atlantic, a dish of American origin; to such a point as to reinforce the failure of antique dealers, and even of some museums, to identify their ice cream moulds for what they are.
This ‘phenomenon’ constitutes perhaps the greatest paradox of all in the history of ice cream in the English-speaking world. However, ice cream has acquired its own histories in many other regions, quite enough to fill a book but here exemplified by just a few paragraphs.
In the Indian subcontinent, where the art of milk reduction has been highly developed, ice cream is called kulfi and is made with khoya, i.e. greatly reduced milk. It is traditionally made in cone-shaped receptacles, to which Achaya (1994) refers in citing a 16th-century document about the preparation of ice cream in Emperor Akbar's royal kitchens (with pistachio nuts and saffron). The same author suggests that the Moghuls had been responsible for introducing this frozen dessert to India, possibly bringing it from Kabul in Afghanistan, a country famous for being a crossroads between East and West. (This is perhaps the place to mention the theory that early iced dairy products developed in China before ad 1000 could have travelled westwards, although not by the hand of Marco Polo, who is associated with so much culinary mythology. The matter is discussed by Caroline Liddell and Robin Weir (1993), but without reaching any dogmatic conclusions.)
In SE Asia, the prize for interesting ice creams must be awarded to the Philippines. Ice cream must have arrived there from Spain, because the old-fashioned ice cream (helado) was made in a grinder called garapinera, with rock salt and ice packed round a central container of milk etc. In modern times American-style ice creams have been dominant, but often with ‘native’ flavours such as ube (purple yam) and macapuno (see coconut), but also corn (maize) and cheese—all these being sold by vendors from exceptionally colourful carts.
In the Near and Middle East there are a number of outstanding ice creams. In Iran an ice cream flavoured with salep, sprinkled with pistachios, and laced with rosewater is particularly popular although commercial production does not date back further than the 1950s. This may well have come from Turkey, where salepli dondurma (salep ice cream sometimes with mastic added) is a traditional delicacy. Salep and mastic turn up again in booza ala haleeb, the ‘milk ice cream’ of Lebanon, where another remarkable ice cream is made with apricot ‘leather’ (see apricot).
It might be thought that in the cold climate of N. Europe there would be less enthusiasm for ice cream, especially in the winter. However, the history of ice cream in Russia belies this idea. Lesley Chamberlain (1983) writes that:
Ice cream has been immensely popular in Russia since it was introduced in the eighteenth century as a delicacy for the aristocracy. By the end of the nineteenth century it was possible to buy as a piece of standard household equipment a morozhenitsa, consisting of a deep metal receptacle fitted inside a bucket filled with ice and salt. The receptacle contained the ice cream mixture and was fitted with a lid and a long stirring tool which dislodged mixture as it froze at the sides. But it probably remained something of a treat until in an immensely popular move in the 1920s Anastas Mikoyan set up the first Soviet Russian ice cream factory. That industry never looked back. Ice cream parlours are as popular in Russian cities as they are in the Mediterranean, and the product sold is of a purity and creaminess that constantly astounds Western visitors.
A world tour of ice creams could be continued indefinitely, but would probably lead always to the same conclusion, that Italy is the top country for this product. Certainly, the prevalence of ice cream parlours and vendors with Italian names, worldwide, is remarkable. However, a distinction must be drawn between the excellence of ice cream at good establishments in Italy and the quality of products sold with the benefit of Italian names outside Italy. The latter may be good, but has often been greatly inferior. The ‘hokey pokey’ which Italians sold to children in Glasgow (for example) at the turn of the century sounds fun and poses interesting etymological questions but, to judge by some contemporary descriptions, was of lamentable quality.
Mariani (1994) writes as follows about the origins of the ice cream cone:
The ice cream cone is equally as confusing as to its origins. It seems clear that the cone (a wafer rolled to hold a scoop of ice cream) became popular at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, but there are several claims as to just who started hawking it there. Some authorities credit a Syrian immigrant named Ernest A. Hamwi with the invention, which was actually a Persian pastry, zalabia, that Hamwi rolled to hold ice cream when another concessionaire ran out of ice cream dishes.
For ‘zalabia’ see jalebi, which may have been involved in the impromptu invention, as suggested. An alternative ‘inventor’ is Italo Marchiony, an Italian immigrant who filed a patent on an ice cream cone in 1893, claiming he had made them since 1896'. Robin Weir (2000), an indefagitable researcher, has proposed that hand-held glass cones were used by Neapolitan street vendors in the 1820s and that the first edible cone was created by the English cook and recipe writer Mrs A. B. Marshall in 1888.
See also bombe; cassata; parfait; and the two immediately following entries.
Alan Davidson was a distinguished author and publisher, and one of the world's best-known writers on fish and fish cookery. In 1975 he retired early from the diplomatic service—after serving in, among other places, Washington, Egypt, Tunisia, and Laos, where he was British Ambassador—to pursue a fruitful second career as a food historian and food writer extraordinaire. Among his popular books are Seafood of South-East Asia, North Atlantic Seafood, and Mediterranean Seafood. In 2003, shortly before his death, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize for his contribution to European culture.
Achaya, K. T. (1994), Indian Food: A Historical Companion, Delhi: OUP.
Ashmole, Elias (1672), The Institution, Laws and Ceremonies of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, London: Nathanael Brooke.
Chamberlain, Lesley (1983), The Food and Cooking of Russia, London: Penguin.
Liddell, Caroline, and Weir, Robin (1993), Ices, London: Hodder & Stoughton.
Mariani, John (1994), The Dictionary of American Food and Drink, 2nd rev edn, New York: Hearst.
Marshall, Mrs Agnes B. (1888), Mrs A. B. Marshall's Cookery Book, London: Marshall's School of Cookery.
Stallings, W. S. (1979), ‘Ice Cream and Water Ices in 17th and 18th Century England’, Supplement to PPC 3.
Weir, Robin (2000), ‘More on the Origin and History of the Ice-Cream Cone’, in Walker (2000).
