Do you like ice cream?
Do you know how ice cream come about?
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Most of the following material has been extracted from "The History
of Ice Cream", written by the International Association of Ice
Cream Manufacturers (IAICM), Washington DC, 1978. As you will note
below, however, much of the early history of ice cream remains
unproven folklore.
Once upon a time, hundreds of years ago, Charles I of England
hosted a sumptous state banquet for many of his friends and family.
The meal, consisting of many delicacies of the day, had been simply
superb but the "coup de grace" was yet to come. After much
preparation, the King's french chef had concocted an apparently new
dish. It was cold and resembled fresh- fallen snow but was much
creamier and sweeter than any other after- dinner dessert. The
guests were delighted, as was Charles, who summoned the cook and
asked him not to divulge the recipe for his frozen cream. The King
wanted the delicacy to be served only at the Royal table and
offered the cook 500 pounds a year to keep it that way. Sometime
later, however, poor Charles fell into disfavour with his people
and was beheaded in 1649. But by that time, the secret of the
frozen cream remained a secret no more. The cook, named DeMirco,
had not kept his promise.
This story is just one of many of the fascinating tales which
surround the evolution of our country's most popular dessert, ice
cream. It is likely that ice cream was not invented, but rather
came to be over years of similar efforts. Indeed, the Roman Emperor
Nero Claudius Caesar is said to have sent slaves to the mountains
to bring snow and ice to cool and freeze the fruit drinks he was so
fond of. Centuries later, the Italian Marco Polo returned from his
famous journey to the Far East with a recipe for making water ices
resembling modern day sherbets.
