July 19th is
NATIONAL ICE CREAM DAY!
Go ahead and indulge with one of America's Favorite treats!
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What Did We Do Before Ice Cream?
The history of eating frozen desserts actually goes back thousands of years. The Persians ate frozen fruit-flavored desserts similar to Italian water ices or sorbets; the Egyptians imported ice from northern areas of the Mediterranean to make chilled desserts; and the Romans employed teams of runners to bring ice from the mountains into the cities to make and chill their desserts!
Ice cream recipes appear in cookbooks as early as 1718. The Quakers brought recipes for ice cream to Philadelphia and delegates to the Continental Congress including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, ate and enjoyed ice cream. Washington, Jefferson, and many other Americans of their day had ice houses where they stored ice that had been harvested from lakes in the winter for use in the summer. A review of early American cookbooks will reveal that iced desserts were popular and there is a multitude of recipes for iced desserts and ice cream made using early ripening fruits such as strawberries. In 1768 a recipe book devoted solely to flavored ices and ice cream was printed in France.
The process of making ice cream became easier and easier as the technology improved. Ice cream was originally made by stirring the mixture in an open container, in 1843 Nancy Johnson, of Philadelphia, received a patent for a hand cranked ice cream maker that used a closed container. The hand cranked ice cream maker was easier to use and made smoother ice cream. Later on electric power and commercial refrigeration made the process even easier and made ice cream more readily available all year.
So we include these events from before the age of electric commercial refrigeration because even back in the 1700 and 1800's, ice cream was part of the American culinary landscape, just a less frequent and more exotic treat than it is today
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Ice Cream in Space?
 Did you know that October 5 is the Anniversary of the Birth of Robert Hutchings Goddard in 1882?
Worcester-born Goddard was one of the first people to seriously explore
rocket propulsion and is often credited as the Father of Space Flight.
During his lifetime he was shunned as being an unrealistic dreamer.
What
does this have to do with ice cream? This terrestrial treat was
considered to be worthy of the expense of developing an ice cream that
did not need to be kept frozen so that it could be included in the
foods stocked on the Apollo space flight missions, the mission to the
moon, and on the space station. Most of those who have eaten
freeze-dried ice cream will agree that it is nowhere near as tasty as
the real thing! So in recognition of the fact that you can have the
real thing, go on out and have some! |
