History of Ice Cream

History of Ice Cream
It’s all come a long way since Nero snacked on snow mixed with fruit pulp and honey – around 62 A.D. No one’s quite sure where ice cream originated although credit is usually given to Arabs. They are said to have developed techniques for freezing fruit juices and to have made the first sorbets. In fact, the word sorbet probably derives from the Arabs word ‘scherbet’, meaning sweet snow or from ‘sharber’, meaning ‘to sip’. When Arabs invaded Sicily they brought their food with them and the fame of their frozen drink began to spread.

Fast forward to the Renaissance and 16th-century Florence where two cooks made ice cream history. The first, Ruggeri was a chicken farmer who made it to the culinary big time thanks to a sorbet he made for Catherine Medici; the second, Bernardo Buontalenti, was well known architect who stunned the gastronomic establishment by producing a frozen dessert based on zabaglione and fruit.

In the 17th century, a French ice cream maker in the employ of King Charles 1 of England was paid to keep his recipe a royal secret. In 1769, the first known recipe for ice cream was printed in ‘The Experienced English Housekeeper’.

The first record of ice cream in America dates from 1700 when Governor Bladen of Maryland served it to some of his guests attending a dinner party. Philip Lenzi, a confectioner from London, made ice cream and advertised it for sale in New York beginning in 1774. Ice cream remained an expensive delicacy, available only in confectionaries and café’s, for many years.

In 1848 the first U.S patent was granted for a revolving hand crank freezer with a dasher, one of the first to be made commercially in the United States.

It was not until 1851 that ice cream became available on the wholesale market. Jacob Fussell of Baltimore added ice cream, to his line of wholesale dairy products, built the first ice cream manufacturing plant in Baltimore, and later expanded his business to Washington, D.C., New York and Boston.
History of Ice Cream