FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Ice Cream Trivia

One of the most enjoyable aspects of being a professional cook is the breadth of the occupation, and also the endless amount of available information and knowledge on the subject of food and cooking. A person could live two lifetimes and still not have learned all there is to know of the culinary arts. And this is equally pertinent when writing on the subject, for there are always numerous obscure and senseless facts to spew out on any given recipe, particular dish, type of cuisine, or any foodstuff for that matter. Take something as common place as frozen desserts, such as ice cream and sorbet. The month of July, for example, carries the distinction of not only being National Ice Cream month, it also includes National Ice Cream Day, Creative Ice Cream Flavor Day, National Vanilla Ice Cream Day, National Peach Ice Cream Day and National Strawberry Sundae Day. Not surprisingly most frozen dessert recognitions are deemed for the summer months; August includes such equally nonsensical days as National Spumoni Day, National Ice Cream Soda Day and even National Creamsicle Day. Who thinks these things up, and who actually designates them, I wonder? (National Creamsicle Day?) These are true, so I've read; trust me, I couldn't fabricate these mundane facts if I wanted to (there's even an organization called The Ice Screamers, which has been in existence since 1982; they're a group of people who hold a national convention each year to discuss their passion for the frozen stuff). As ridiculous as these "holidays" may seem, ice cream--and frozen concoctions in general--do have some interesting facts behind them.

As with many foods, there is more than one theory on the origin of these frozen treats, but there are two in particular that seem to stand out. One such assumption is that the modern method of ice cream-making is directly related to methods in which the Chinese have used for many thousands of years to preserve and enjoy fruits and fruit juices. They would pack containers of mashed fruit and juice in ice and salt to freeze it; the salt lowers the temperature of the ice thus easily freezing the fruit. The other common speculation is that the famed emperor Nero was the first to introduce these frozen treats when he commanded his slaves to gather snow from the mountains and drizzle it with honey and fruit juice. Whichever the origin, one can only imagine the luxury (and status) it must have been to consume a frozen food that far prior to the advent of modern refrigeration. Interestingly, it is easy to note that ice cream was originally in the form of an ice rather than a cream, similar to a modern sorbet. The addition of cream came later at an attempt to enrich and "whiten" the ice, which made it more exclusive and desirable to the upper classes. The French word sorbet, the Italian sorbetto, and the English sherbet are all said to be derived from the Turkish chorbet, or possibly the Arabic charbab, which generally refers to syrup-based fruit drinks. It seems odd, though, knowing the ancientness of frozen desserts, that the ice cream cone took so long to be developed--1904, at the St. Louis World's Fair. Apparently, as fate would have it, there was a Syrian immigrant that was selling waffles directly next to an ice cream vendor who was serving his frozen dessert to patrons in glass dishes (remember this was prior to the prevalence of "all things disposable"). Anyhow, the ice cream purveyor ran short of clean dishes and the entrepreneurial waffle maker saw the opportunity and fashioned his waffles into the shape of cones, and the rest is history.

Ice creams, sherbets and sorbets fall into that category of foods where there are so many quality brands readily available that they are very rarely made from scratch at home. There are, though, also two categories of cooks: those who cook in order to supply their daily meals, and those who cook for the sheer enjoyment of it. I am fortunate to be of the latter. And with visions of standing over an old-fashioned hand cranked machine, ice cream making is most often thought of as an arduous task, but its not necessarily so. Many frozen desserts are made easily in the home kitchen and without fancy or expensive equipment. Indeed this was always the case--in Fannie Merritt Farmer's groundbreaking 1896 cookbook, The Boston Cooking School Cookbook, she gives a recipe for vanilla ice cream that contains only three ingredient: cream, sugar and vanilla; the directions state simply "Mix ingredients, and freeze." The lightness of ice cream comes from the aeration, or the churning action of a machine, thus the recipe in Ms. Farmer's book would no doubt yield a very stiff, albeit tasty, product. But if you are a person, like myself, who is without an ice cream maker, there is a shortcut method to achieve lightness, and that is the action of whipping the cream prior to folding it into the base of the recipe (note the frozen chocolate mousse recipe below). And in the case of sorbet, one simply needs to stir the syrupy base periodically while it is freezing; often the texture will have larger ice crystals than if made in an electric machine, and in that case it would be more appropriate to call it a gratina, rather than a sorbet.