Although ice cream has been traced back to the second century B.C., no precise date or inventor has been assigned. Alexander the Great was known to adore honey and nectar-flavoured snow and ice. King Solomon, according to biblical traditions, drank cold drinks while harvesting. Nero Claudius Caesar (A.D. 54-86) sent runners into the mountains to find snow, which he then sweetened with fruits and fluids.
Over a thousand years later, Marco Polo arrived from the Far East with a recipe that was quite close to what we now call sherbet. According to historians, this delicacy evolved into ice cream around the sixteenth century. Ice cream appears to have been discovered in England around the same time as the Italians, if not earlier. "Cream Ice", as it was known in the 17th century, was a familiar sight at Charles I's table. When Catherine de Medici, an Italian, married Henry II of France in 1553, she introduced similar frozen delicacies to France. It wasn't until 1660 that ice cream became widely available to the general population. At Café Procope, the first café in Paris, Sicilian Procopio introduced a recipe combining milk, cream, butter, and eggs.
It's difficult to tell facts from legend when a food has been around for so long. Ice cream has a long and symbiotic history with America. It's what we eat to commemorate birthdays, Little League victories, and other significant events.
A letter written in 1744 by a guest of Maryland Governor William Bladen is the first formal account of ice cream in the New World. The earliest advertisement for ice cream in the United States appeared in the New York Gazette on May 12, 1777, when confectioner Philip Lenzi claimed that ice cream was available basically all the time. According to statistics kept by a vendor on Chatham Street in New York, President George Washington spent roughly $200 on ice cream during the summer of 1790. "Two pewter ice cream pans" were discovered in inventory documents taken following Washington's death at Mount Vernon. President Thomas Jefferson was said to have a favourite 18-step ice cream recipe that was similar to today's Baked Alaska.
Ice cream was a rare and exotic treat enjoyed largely by the upper crust until 1800. Insulated ice huts were invented around 1800. Ice cream production became a business in America after a Baltimore milk dealer called Jacob Fussell pioneered it in 1851. Ice cream production rose, as it did in other American businesses, thanks to technological advancements such as steam power, mechanical refrigeration, the homogenizer, electric power and motors, packing machines, and new freezing techniques and equipment. Furthermore, motorised delivery vans revolutionised the sector. Today's total frozen dairy annual production in the United States is more than 6.4 billion pounds, thanks to continued technological advancements.
