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Wednesday Memes….and contests ending

This is my entry for ABC Wednesday (letter
is I), Three Word Wednesday (Negate
baffle elegant)
Also, do enter the giveaways on my blog (on the right) – ending today and tomorrow.
Ice Cream: one of
my favorite words (actually two!) has got to be ice cream! It conjures up
wonderful images, incredibly delicious memories and infinite pleasure!
I scream for ice cream’ – 
I remember reading this in school in a text book, of all places, and
these words remain etched in my mind to use when I want ice cream!(silently of
course)
Ice cream has a rich history.  Many stories and accounts exist around the
origins of ice cream – enough to baffle
the mind.  But none of these can negate the fact that the ice cream is a
global favorite.  All the stories date it
back to different times in the past though none can be proved without a
time-machine! But until then, we can choose and pick the myths, legends and
possibly facts that revolve around this favorite treat – elegant, sweet, and just about perfect!
The timeline:
  • 2000 BC – The Chinese
    create the first ice creams, or rather ice sans cream.
  • 400 BC – The ice desserts
    travels to the Persian Empire through trade routes and the Persians invent
    a special chilled food, made of rose water and vermicelli (faluda), which
    was served to royalty during summers.
  • 330 BC – Alexander the
    Great enjoys fruit ices having toppled the Persian Empire.
  • 200 BC – The Chinese were
    eating a frozen mixture of milk and rice
  • 37-68 ABD – Roman emperor
    Nero had ice brought from the top of the mountains to eat with fruit
  • 10th century AD
    – The Arabs made milk and sugar a major ingredient of the ice desserts –
    the first precursor to the modern ice cream, most likely!
  • 13th century AD
    – Marco Polo brings ‘ice cream’ back from China
  • 14th century AD
    – Guests at the coronation banquet of Henry V of England in the fourteenth
    century enjoy a dessert called cremefrez
  • 16th century AD
    – Mughal emperors use horsemen to bring ice from Hindukush mountains to
    drink juices fragrant with essences and cooled with the snow and ice
  • 1500s – Architect and set
    designer Bernardo Buontalenti in Florence  invents gelato
  • In 1533, the young Italian
    princess Catherine de Medici went to France as the bride of the future King
    Henry II. Included in her trousseau were recipes for frozen desserts.
  • 1660 – The first public sale of ice cream occurs in Paris at the Cafe Procope
  • 1660s – Wealthy Europeans
    were enjoying treats of ices.
  • 1671 – “One plate of Ice Cream” is served at the feast of King Charles II
  • 1744 – Governor Thomas Bladen of Maryland serves ice cream to his guests
  • 1776
    — The first ice cream parlor opened in New York City.
  • 1784 – Thomas Jefferson found
    ice cream while in Paris and wrote down the recipe for vanilla ice cream.
  • 1806, Independence Day –
    Jefferson has an ice house built in today’s White House and hires a
    servant to turn the ice cream maker.
  • 1812 – Dolly Madison serves
    ice cream at her husband, President 
    James Madison’s inaugural ball
  • 1832, Augustus Jackson, an African American
    confectioner, not only created multiple ice cream recipes but also
    invented a superior technique to manufacture ice cream.
  • 1843 – Nancy Johnson patents
    first hand-cranked ice cream maker in the United States, producing a
    smoother ice cream  – thank you,
    Nancy!
  • 1851 – Jacob Fussell
    launches the first ice cream factory
  • 1874 – Robert Green
    invents the ice cream soda, accidentally.
  • i1880s – The first sundaes
    were created. Why? Because it was prohibited to sell ice cream sodas (very
    popular at that time) on Sunday as being too sinful. The name also
    probably owes it origin to Sunday. Claims of origin are made by Ithaca,
    Buffalo, Two Rivers and other towns in the US.
  • 1893 – fried ice cream shows
    up (again, there are conflicting claims of origin like for every other
    form and flavor of ice cream)(I remember enjoying this first in a Mexican
    restaurant in Old Towne San Diego about 10 years ago)
  • 1903/1904 – Italo Marchiony
    patented an edible cone in 1903 as he sold homemade ice cream from a
    pushcart in New York.   Shortly after
    this, the ice cream cone was made at the St. Louis World’s Fair when an
    ice cream vendor ran out of dishes and teamed up with a waffle vendor to
    make a cone by rolling the waffle. Again there are accounts of Europeans
    having enjoyed cones before 1904!
  • 1920 – The Good Humor man
    comes to town when Harry Burt starts the ice cream company selling ice cream
    in trucks
  • 1938 – Soft serve ice
    cream makes its appearance
  • 1988 – Curt Jones invents
    the Dippin Dots (called the ice cream of the future). It is made by flash
    freezing ice cream mix with liquid nitrogen. 
  • and the story continues….
Fun ice cream
numbers:
How many licks to finish one scoop of ice cream? The answer
is … 50!
How much does the world’s most expensive ice cream cost?
$1000 for the Golden Opulence Sundae at Serendipity 3 in New York
What is the maximum number of flavors of ice cream can you
find in one ice cream parlor? 860, at the Coromoto
Ice Cream Shop
in Venezuela.
overrun – used in
commercial ice cream making to refer to the air in the ice cream
dasher blades – referring to the ‘paddle’ of
an ice cream making machine that helps churn the mixture.
Other great reads:
Image credit: http://icecreampictures.org and http://travelerhubs.hubpages.com/hub/Worlds-Most-Expensive-Ice-Cream

15 thoughts on “Wednesday Memes….and contests ending

  1. Loved reading all these juicy tidbits about ice cream. Given that up nawth I hear they put maple syrup on snow as a winter treat sometimes, I wonder what kind of frozen desserts were being made by the Lapplanders as well as other Scandinavians. "I scream, you scream, we all scream for ICE CREAM!!!" Yeah.

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