The Story of Ice Cream

The Story of Ice Cream
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.

There are numerous types of “edible ice”, essentially mixtures of water, sugar, flavor substances, and other components, which are partly frozen and beaten to form a rigid foam. In most types, milk or cream, is an important ingredient.

Furthermore, soft serve, ordinary, and hardened ice cream, are distinguished. Soft ice cream is eaten while fresh. It is made on the spot, its temperature is usually –3 to -5 degree C, and hence it still contains a fairly large amount of nonfrozen water; generally its fat content and overrun are rather low. Hardened ice cream usually packed in small portions and sometimes supplied with an external chocolate coating, is much lower in temperature (e.g., -25 degree C), it hardly contains unfrozen water, and it is thus very hard; it has a long shelf life (several month). Ordinary ice cream has a lower temperature than soft ice cream (- 10 to -15 degree C), but is not so cold as to be entirely solid; it is stored (a few weeks at most) in cans, from which portions can be ladled out.

The energy value and nutrients of ice cream depend upon the food value of the ingredients from which it is made. The milk products that go into the mix contain the constituents of milk, but in different amounts. On weight basis ice cream contains three to four times as much fat and about 12 – 16% more protein than does milk. In addition, it may contain other food products, such as fruit, nuts, eggs, candies and sugar and these may enhance its nutritive value. Ice cream contains about four times as much carbohydrate as milk.

Ice cream is and excellent source of food energy. The fact that the constituents of ice cream are almost completely assimilated makes ice cream an especially desirable food for growing children and for persons who need to put on weight. For the same reason, its controlled use finds a place in the diet of persons who need to reduce or who do not wish to gain weight.
The Story of Ice Cream