A Brief History of Ice Cream
This article was written by Samuel Phineas Upham
Ice cream is an enigmatic food with no clear history. Although there is value in exploring the truth about something, other times it’s fun to just listen to the history as told through folk lore. With ice cream in particular, there is much that can be learned about our gastronomic history.
Catherine de Medici
Catherine claims that she was brought to France accompanied by a series of Italian confectioners. These bakers and candy makers taught the French the basics of ice cream preparation, and frozen sherbets. Italians so thoroughly believed this story, that the credo is a huge part of their cooking.
Flavors
People first began using honey and fruit to flavor the shaved ice they would eat. When cream was added to the mix, even more flavors were introduced. A recipe from 1769 calls for paired apricots, while Thomas Jefferson’s recipe called for eggs and cream.
American Ice Cream Recipes
The first recipe for ice cream was published in America within The New Art of Cookery, According to the Present Practice. This recipe was also one of the first known recipes in America to feature vanilla as its primary ingredient, although it’s likely that fruit-based sherbets and ice creams were probably more popular.
Chocolate Ice Cream
The popular chocolate variety of ice cream may have come from the French. The British mention ice cream throughout the 18th century, but fail to use cream as a base and often used fruit to flavor. The French were known lovers of chocolate by the seventeenth century, and it’s most likely that chocolate ice cream came from there.
About the Author: Samuel Phineas Upham is an investor at a family office/hedgefund, where he focuses on special situation illiquid investing. Before this position, Samuel Phineas Upham was working at Morgan Stanley in the Media & Technology group. You may contact Samuel Phineas Upham on his Samuel Phineas Upham website.