Revisiting a tasty treat from the past!

July is National Ice Cream Month. What better excuse for taking a look at the history of ice cream?

I confess, it is difficult for me to think of ice cream without smiling. I don’t want to go so far as to say a food makes me happy, but it does make me smile, especially with temperatures around here being in the high 90’s for the last month! So what better excuse to take this month to see how ice cream may have looked during Jane Austen’s life and how she (and her characters) might have enjoyed them.

It is easy to think of ice cream being a fairly recent development on the food scene, considering that it needs refrigeration in order to work after all, and that hasn’t been around that very long. But hey, where there’s a will there’s way. Human ingenuity crafted the pyramids with man power alone—ice cream sounds simple by comparison, doesn’t it? Consequently, ice cream has been around for a lot longer than we realize, hundreds, maybe thousands of years longer.

Ice Cream in the Ancient World

It is a little difficult to tell exactly who produced the first ice cream and from there how it actually got to Europe. But, first things first. Before you could have ice cream in the days before refrigeration, you had to have ice.

Mesopotamia boasted some of the earliest ice storage houses, in use about four thousand years ago. The wealthy—generally the only one who had access to ice until refrigeration came on the scene—used the ice to cool their wine. A little later, Alexander the Great decided his army would appreciate chilled wine during the hot months, so he had pits dug and filled with snow to save for the summer. (Andrews, 2001) The idea appeared to catch on, and the Greeks sold snow in the fifth century BC markets of Athens.

‘Chinese Materia Dietetica, Ming: Summer ice’ by Anonymous. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY 4.0

When and where did we cross the line from using ice to make things cold to actually creating frozen foods? There seems to be two lines of thinking. Some food historians suggest the Chinese created the first ice creams, possibly as early as 3000 BC. (Olver, 2004). Others suggest it was several thousand years later, crediting the Tang Dynasty of the seventh, eighth and ninth centuries with mixing dairy products into a frozen confection “Using milk from cows, goats, or buffalo, lowered into ice pools in metal tubes, this embryonic version of ice cream was a treat for emperors.” (Rossen, 2017) Still others point to the Turkish Empire, where iced fruit drinks called sarbat were frequently consumed, as the originators of frozen confections of today. (Andres, 2001)

Ice Cream goes to Europe

How did ice cream get to Europe? Culinary mythology suggests in the thirteenth century Marco Polo brought back the notion of water ices and frozen confections when he returned to Venice from his trip to China. However, Sicily, considered by some the Western world’s home of frozen ices, claims an Arabic inspiration for the sweet treats. (Semeti, 1989) All in all, it is difficult to say whether water ices were first made in Italy, France or Spain.  France’s claim to being an early force in ice cream history is strengthened by Emy’s 1768  L’Art de bien faire les glaces d’office,  the first book dedicated solely to ice cream.  Regardless of where they originated, they quickly spread between the more sophisticated cities of Europe during the seventeenth century.  (Davidson, 1999)

Italians were masters in developing methods of chilling and freezing drinks into sorbets and granitas. Latini’s Treatise on Various Kinds of Sorbets, or Water Ices (written between 1692 and 1694) contained the first written recipes on how to mix sugar, salt, snow, fruits and their juices, as well as chocolate, and spices into a variety of frozen confections. The book also includes a “milk sorbet that is first cooked,” probably the first true ice cream recipes published. De’sorbetti by Filippo Baldini in 1775 was the first book entirely dedicated to frozen confections. An entire chapter dealt with “milky sorbets,” (in other words ice creams) vigorously proclaiming their medicinal properties. (Capatti, 1999)

Ice Cream and the English Speaking World

Charles II eating the second course of this Garter feast. A detail of an etched illustration by Wenceslaus Hollar in Ashmole’s book “The Institution, Laws & Ceremonies of the Most Noble Order of the Garter”

The first record of ice cream in English is found on the 1671 menu of a feast for the Knights of the Garter at Windsor Castle.  The earliest published recipe in English appeared in Mrs. Eale’s Receipts, a book dedicated to confectionery printed in London in 1718.  

From England, it was only a short hop for ice cream to appear across the pond in the United States. The earliest record of ice cream in the US appears to have been in 1744 served by the lady of Governor Blandon of Maryland, nee Barbara Jannsen, daughter of Lord Baltimore. (Davidson, 1999) During the 1770’s, George Washington helped popularize the dish, serving it at his estate, Mount Vernon, during elite functions. As president in 1790, merchant records suggest Washington spent over $200 ($3000 in today’s prices) on ice cream during the summer. Presidents Jefferson and Madison also served ice cream for special occasions.

As ice cream continued to be served among the elite functions and became more accessible for the populace, a national love affair with the confection began. “Authelme Brittat-Savarin , a French politician and writer on gastronomy, tells how a French Captain named Collet made and sold ices in New York in 1794 and 1795.  He describes, with satisfaction, the surprise of American women at this technological and masculine feat: ‘Nothing could be more amusing than the little grimaces they made when eating them.  They were utterly at a loss to conceive how a substance could be kept so cold in a temperature of ninety degrees.’” (Stradley, 2017)

Watch this space for the rest of the month of July for a deeper look at Regency era ice cream, ice cream parlors, and the real origins of the ice cream cone, plus original recipes for period ice creams that we’d be hard pressed to find today. (Can we say asparagus ice cream? Yeah, really!)

For more on Ice Cream in Jane Austen’s World, click HERE.

Click Here for References