All About Ice Cream
Source of Recipe
J. Scott Wilson
Ice cream has a long and illustrious history, with related confections dating as far back as Roman emperor Nero. It started to take on its modern form in the 16th century, when the Italians learned that ice and salt together would make a freezing mixture. In 1782, it was served in the New World at a Philadelphia party given by the French envoy in honor of the new republic.
Ice cream began its move from delicacy to popular dessert in 1846, with the invention of the first hand-cranked ice cream freezer. The design did not change very much between that one and the one you cranked for what seemed like hours when you were a kid. If you were lucky, you had one of the ones with the motorized crank, but I didn't even see one of those until I was an adult.
The ice cream cone's origins are clouded in mystery and controversy. The most popular version of the story is set at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. An ice cream maker, the story goes, ran out of cups in which to serve his ice cream and enlisted a nearby waffle maker to roll up some of his creations into cones to hold the confection.
The 1904 World's Fair, by the way, brought a number of popular foods to the world's attention. Besides ice cream cones, hot dogs, iced tea, Dr Pepper, peanut butter and cotton candy were made known to the general public.
It wasn't long before ice cream parlors sprouted up in every city and town large enough to sell a few gallons.
The ice cream sundae is another concoction with origins clouded in mystery, but my favorite version of the tale comes from around the turn of the century. In the Midwest, laws were passed prohibiting the selling of soda water on a Sunday. The town of Evanston, Ill., was one of the first towns to pass such a law around 1890. As an alternative on Sundays, local soda fountains started selling ice cream sodas minus the soda, which left ice cream and syrup.
But enough of all that history. I can hear your sweet tooths screaming out there.
You can, of course, slide over to the grocery store and buy some ice cream. There are many fine flavors and brands, from super premiums like Ben & Jerry's down to the store brands, but why not make some at home?
Ice cream makers have come a long way. You can, of course, still get the old ice-and-salt machines. However, the new breed of machines have containers that you keep in the freezer and plug into the machine when you're ready to make your ice cream. With the motorized stirring and the chill container, you can have a batch of homemade goodies ready in less than half an hour.
The richest ice creams are custard-based, and to make one of them you'll have to become comfortable with a cooking process called tempering.
Occasionally, you'll have occasion to add eggs to a hot mixture. Now, if you dump cold or room-temperature eggs straight into a hot mixture, you'll get poached or scrambled eggs floating in soup. The trick is to get the eggs up to temperature before adding them. Take a small amount of the hot mixture and add it to the eggs, whisking constantly. After the mixture and eggs are completely combined, slowly add the eggs to the hot pot, again whisking constantly. Fair warning: you may not get it right the first time. That's part of what cooking is about, learning new techniques and how NOT to do them. It'll be that much more gratifying when you dip a spoon into that first bowl of your own homemade batch.
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