SC - Ice Cream in Period (not)

[L Herr-Gelatt and J R Gelatt]

>
>     (Grin) Oh, I'm sure we can come up with *something*........... ;-) ;-)
>;-) For what it's worth, *my* big passion is chocolate--at least licorice is
>period! Now a question for the list--what about ice cream? I'm fairly sure
>I've heard that the Romans made ices, but I don't have anything indicating
>that the frozen custard concept existed. Anyone know for sure?
>
>      Ldy Diana

I spent some time studying this one, since I was actually served an
ice-cream at an event long ago. Ignorantly, I continued to believe it was
period, simply because someone had included it in their menu!

I have discovered the following facts:

Several cultures had fruit "ices", including the Maya. This consisted of a
fruit syrup possibly sweetned with honey, poured over specially imported
snow (from near-by mountains).

Ice cream makes its first truly historical appearance (is given leterary
mention)at the table of Mrs. Martha Washington (NOT the woman who
owned/added to the M.W. Cookbook , but the 1st American President's Wife).
It seems her inclusion of icecream was a big novelty, and one she imported
from Europe, being a new invention. This, naturally, happened after the
American Revolution, which took place OOP for us.

We know that the Tudors had cold "Banquet" houses (basically a semi-buried
ice-house, tarted up nice for visitors), where they served cold dessert type
foods to the favored amongst their guests after the big celebrations. We
know ice was in there, but we do not know that cream was poured over fruit,
sugar, etc, and churned in a cold area to produce "Iced Cream". The likliest
possibility is that sorbet is within our period. Other dishes served would
have included custards, gelatin moulds, etc.

If you think about it, you can see the progression from the "refrigerated"
dishes of the Tudor period to the experimentation with cooking cold dishes
(sorbet, custards, sweet gelatines, etc), once keeping ice houses became
popular. From there we have a jump to the relative cheapness of sugar and
then the discovery of the properties of sweetened frozen cream. That
evolution would have taken a little while.

So no, it does not appear that Iced Cream was period. Does anyone have
documentation for Sorbet?


Aoife   

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