Exploring the Snack Bar

Italy is proud to be the home of ice cream. Is it really so? History is full of legends, and also issues of definition - when does a frozen ice mixture turn into "real" ice cream?

Although there are earlier legends, we can be confident that the Chinese were eating frozen mixtures of milk and rice about 200 BC. Even earlier, around 400 BC, the Persians had a pudding of chilled rose essence and noodles, mixed with saffron fruit and so much more. A similar dessert is still sold called faloodeh. Delicious but not really ice cream. The Arabs had a strong liking for iced desserts and were the first to mixed milk and sugar in the recipe as well as making it commercially in major cities, including Cairo.

Ingredients would include yoghurt, dried fruit and nuts. This sounds much more like the ice cream we know.

The first Italian claim comes from the emperor Nero who sent slaves to the Appennies to bring ice to be combined with fruit and toppings, but this sounds a long way from ice cream. There is a legend that when Caterina de Medici moved from Italy to France to marry the future king, she took Italian chefs who brought the secrets of ice cream with them. Another legend says Charles I of England, who fell in live with the taste whilst in Paris, bribed a Frenchman to bring the secret back to England.

The transport of ice was always the key constraint in making ice cream. In the 16th century, Mughal Emperors of India used relays of horsemen to bring ice from the Hindu Kush to Delhi, but we are not sure what they did with it.

Coming to more recent and firmer evidence, France takes the lead with the first known ice cream recipe by Nicolas Lemery in 1674. Italy followed closely behind in 1694 with Antonio Latini's "Lo scalo alla moderna". England had to wait until 1718 for a recipe from Mrs. Mary Eale's Receipts.

In the days before freezers, the most essential equipment for ice cream making was an ice house to store ice through to summer. Thick walls and lots of straw were needed to minimize the losses.

In the USA, the founders of independence Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington are all known to have been ice cream lovers, so it is no surprise to learn that the first ice cream parlour opened in Washington in 1776.

So we can't be sure if Italy was really the home of ice cream, but in my opinion we have to give that country the credit for having the best.

About the Author:

Irsan's passion is to write on wide varieties of subjects. His latest writing is at bushnell spotting scope which contains reviews on bushnell spotting scopes and other information about spotting scopes.

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