Ice cream or ice-cream (originally iced cream) is a frozen dessert made from dairy products, such as milk and cream, combined with flavorings and sweeteners, such as sugar, and possible other ingredients. This mixture is stirred slowly while cooling to prevent large ice crystals from forming; the result is a smoothly textured ice cream. In the United States, ice cream made with just cream, sugar, and a flavoring (usually fruit) is sometimes referred to as "Philadelphia style"[citation needed] ice cream. Ice creams made with eggs, usually in the form of custards, are "French" ice creams.
Frozen custard, frozen yogurt, sorbet, gelato, and other similar products are sometimes informally called ice cream, but governments generally regulate the commercial use of these terms based on quantities of ingredients. American federal labeling standards require ice cream to contain a minimum of 10% milk fat (about 7 grams (g) of fat per 1/2 cup serving) and 20% total milk solids by weight.
Production
Before the development of modern refrigeration, ice cream was a luxury item reserved for special occasions. Making ice cream was quite laborious. Ice was cut from lakes and ponds during the winter and stored in large heaps, in holes in the ground, or in wood-frame ice houses, insulated by straw. Many farmers and plantation owners, including U.S. Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, cut and stored ice in the winter for use in the summer. Frederic Tudor of Boston turned ice harvesting and shipping into big business, cutting ice in New England and shipping it around the world.
Ice cream was made by hand in a large bowl placed inside a tub filled with ice and salt. This was called the pot-freezer method. French confectioners refined the pot-freezer method, making ice cream in a sorbtierre (a covered pail with a handle attached to the lid). In the pot-freezer method, the temperature of the ingredients is reduced by the mixture of crushed ice and salt. The salt water is cooled by the ice, and the action of the salt on the ice causes it to (partially) melt, absorbing latent heat and bringing the mixture below the freezing point of pure water. The immersed container can also make better thermal contact with the salty water and ice mixture than it could with ice alone.
The hand-cranked churn, which also uses ice and salt for cooling, replaced the pot-freezer method. The exact origin of the hand-cranked freezer is unknown, but the first U.S. patent for one was 3254 issued to Nancy Johnson on September 9, 1843. The hand-cranked churn produced smoother ice cream than the pot freezer and did it quicker. Many inventors patented improvements on Johnson's design.
In Europe and early America, ice cream was made and sold by small businesses, mostly confectioners and caterers. Jacob Fussell of Baltimore, Maryland was the first to manufacture ice cream on a large scale. Fussell bought fresh dairy products from farmers in York County, Pennsylvania, and sold them in Baltimore. An unstable demand for his dairy products often left him with a surplus of cream, which he made into ice cream. He built his first ice-cream factory in Seven Valleys, Pennsylvania, in 1851. Two years later he moved his factory to Baltimore. Later he opened factories in several other cities and taught the business to others, who operated their own plants. Mass production reduced the cost of ice cream and added to its popularity.
The development of industrial refrigeration by German engineer Carl von Linde during the 1870s eliminated the need to cut and store natural ice and when the continuous-process freezer was perfected in 1926, it allowed commercial mass production of ice cream and the birth of the modern ice cream industry.
The most common method for producing ice cream at home is to use an ice cream maker, in modern times generally an electrical device that churns the ice cream mixture while cooled inside a household freezer, or using a solution of pre-frozen salt and water, which gradually melts while the ice cream freezes. Some more expensive models have an inbuilt freezing element. A newer method of making home-made ice cream is to add liquid nitrogen to the mixture while stirring it using a spoon or spatula. Some ice cream recipes call for making a custard, folding in whipped cream, and immediately freezing the mixture.
Ancient civilizations had saved ice for cold foods for thousands of years.[citation needed] Mesopotamia has the earliest icehouses in existence, 4,000 years ago, beside the Euphrates River, where the wealthy stored items to keep them cold.[citation needed] The pharaohs of Egypt had ice shipped to them.[citation needed] In the fifth century BC, ancient Greeks sold snow cones mixed with honey and fruit in the markets of Athens.[citation needed] Persians, having mastered the storage of ice, ate chilled desserts well into summer.[citation needed] Roman emperor Nero (37–68) had ice brought from the mountains and combined with fruit toppings. These were some early chilled delicacies.
Ancient Persians mastered the technique of storing ice inside giant naturally-cooled refrigerators known as yakhchals. These structures kept ice brought in from the winter, or from nearby mountains, well into the summer. They worked by using tall windcatchers that kept the sub-level storage space at frigid temperatures.
In 400 BC, Persians invented a special chilled pudding-like dish, made of rosewater and vermicelli which was served to royalty during summers. The ice was mixed with saffron, fruits, and various other flavors. The treat, widely made in Iran today, is called "faloodeh", and is made from starch (usually wheat), spun in a sieve-like machine which produces threads or drops of the batter, which are boiled in water. The mix is then frozen, and mixed with rosewater and lemons, before serving.[citation needed]
In 62 AD, the Roman emperor Nero sent slaves to the Apennine mountains to collect snow to be flavored with honey and nuts.[citation needed]
Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat asserts in her History of Food, "the Chinese may be credited with inventing a device to make sorbets and ice cream. They poured a mixture of snow and saltpetre over the exteriors of containers filled with syrup, for, in the same way as salt raises the boiling-point of water, it lowers the freezing-point to below zero.Toussaint-Samat gives no ancient Chinese historical source for this claim.
In the sixteenth century, the Mughal emperors used relays of horsemen to bring ice from the Hindu Kush to Delhi where it was used in fruit sorbets.
When Italian duchess Catherine de' Medici married the duc d’Orléans in 1533, she is said to have brought with her Italian chefs who had recipes for flavored ices or sorbets and introduced them in France.One hundred years later Charles I of England was supposedly so impressed by the "frozen snow" that he offered his own ice cream maker a lifetime pension in return for keeping the formula secret, so that ice cream could be a royal prerogative.
The first recipe for flavored ices in French appears in 1674, in Nicholas Lemery’s Recueil de curiositéz rares et nouvelles de plus admirables effets de la nature.
Recipes for sorbetti saw publication in the 1694 edition of Antonio Latini's Lo Scalco alla Moderna (The Modern Steward).
Recipes for flavored ices begin to appear in François Massialot's Nouvelle Instruction pour les Confitures, les Liqueurs, et les Fruits starting with the 1692 edition. Massialot's recipes result in a coarse, pebbly texture. However, Latini claims that the results of his recipes should have the fine consistency of sugar and snow.
