Luxury foods demand the luxury treatment! Take a look at the ice cream cups and other special serving vessels for ice cream.

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If you’ve been reading Random Bits of Fascination for a while, then you may remember talking about specialized china for luxury dishes before. If not, you might want to check out these posts on Chocolate Pots vs. Coffee Pots, and Chocolate cups vs. Tea cups. 

Since ice cream was (during Austen’s day) a luxury only the wealthy could enjoy at home, it is hardly surprising that there was a ready market for all manner of accessories with which to properly eat the delicacy as well.

There were two primary forms in which ice cream could be served, molded and ‘rough’. After the ice cream reached a soft frozen stage, it could be turned out into ice pails and brought to the dining room to be scooped into cups or glasses and served or it could be packed into molds. The molds would be frozen for several hours, then turned out on decorative platters, possibly colored with food safe dyes and accessorized according to the type of mold, then brought to the dining room. 

Ice Pails

If served rough, ice cream would be brought to the table in a special ice pail,a seau à glace. The design, first available in the 1720’s, featured three pieces, an outer pail which held ice and probably salt, and inner bowl that held the ice cream and a lid upon which you would pile more ice. Modern experiments have shown that a pail like this one could keep ice cream frozen for up to four hours.

Porcelain was the preferred material for these pails. The salt solution in the upper and lower parts of the vessel would damage other materials, allowing it to find its way into the inner liner and contaminate the ice cream.

If you look closely you can see feet at the bottom of this pail, a feature of later designs. Earlier models without the feet would eventually soak the tablecloth with condensation and possibly adhere to it as well. Thus, early ice cream pails were place on napkins or plates. Ice cream pails like these were rarely made after 1830 due to the increased popularity of molded ice creams. ( Day, 2004)

Ice cream pail images from The MET museum, Public Domain.

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Ice Cream Molds

After the ice cream had been initially soft frozen (congealed) in the predecessor of the hand crank ice cream machine, called a sabotiere, it might be placed in a lead or pewter mold. The molds were often two pieced hinged molds. The seams of the mold had to be sealed with lard or butter in hopes of sealing out the salt water. After wrapping in brown paper, the molds would be submerged in a mixture of ice and salt for several hours until frozen.

In the Victorian era a device called an ice cave, essentially an early refrigerator, could be used to freeze the molds,  avoiding the problem of water seepage into the molds. (And ice cave was a double walled metal box. Ice, salt and water would be placed between the walls to freeze what was inside the box.)

 Ice cream molds could be elaborate. Fruits and vegetable were common themes. Flowers, biscuit and cigar shapes as well as cheese shaped molds were also very popular. These molds remained popular into the twentieth century, when concerns about the lead in the molds dramatically reduced their popularity.(Day, 2004)

Images from: Marshall, A. B. Wheaton.  The Book of Ices. London : Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, & Co: Marshall’s School of Cookery, 1888.

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Ice Cream cups and spoons

Not surprisingly, special dishes and utensils developed for eating ice cream as well. 

Ice cream served rough required cups or glasses which had distinctly different shapes than cups for coffee, tea or chocolate. Most noticeably ice cream cups had feet, usually hollow. Some sources suggest that this was because it made it better for servants to handle (serve) them. Hollow feet would also insulate the bottom of the cup and protect them from condensation which would make them adhere to a tablecloth, much like the footed ice cream pails. Most ice cream cups also sported distinct, scrolled handles which would keep the diner’s fingers away from the body of the cup, protecting them from the cold and the ice cream from the heat of their hands. Finally, the cups were narrower at the bottom than at the top, like ice houses, funneling the melted ice cream to the bottom of the cup and away from the rest of the frozen mass. Narrow and sometimes long spoons were designed to allow the ice cream at the bottom of the cup to be reached easily.

For molded ice creams, a slicer was provided to cut into the mold and special plates used to serve the ice cream. A second form of ice cream spoon, wider and more spade-shaped appeared to be used with sliced ice cream on plates. This shape would allow eaters to scoop up the tasty bits of melted ice cream. By the Victorian era, special spork-like ice cream forks developed to help diners break off bits of hard frozen ice cream with the sharp tines then scoop them up with the spoon-like bowl.

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Gallery images from The MET Museum and wikimedia, public domain.

Now that you know the differences between coffee, tea, chocolate and ice cream cups, I dare you to go by Ebay and see how many of the cups are mislabeled! Even if you don’t, I promise you’ll never look at cups the same way again! Check out my Pinterest board on Georgian and Regency Ice Cream if you’d like to see more gorgeous china especially for ice cream.

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

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