Get your Lactaid pills ready for National Ice Cream Day on July 21, dairy lovers’ most important day of the year.
National Ice Cream Day kicks off in the middle of a hot National Ice Cream Month and celebrates ice cream’s history, which is almost as rich as a scoop of triple chocolate hazelnut ice cream.
The delectable dessert’s origin is shrouded in mystery, but one theory suggests that ice cream dates as far back as 5000 BC in Mesopotamia, the world’s oldest recorded civilization.
Slaves in Mesopotamia would take snow from the mountains and mix it with various fruits and milk. These ice-based concoctions were stored in yakhchāls underneath the banks of the Euphrates River.
A yakhchāl is an ancient type of ice storage house.
These concoctions were later served cold to kings as a somewhat frozen dessert.
People used a similar method during the Achaemenid Empire, which existed in Persia from 500 BC to the reign of Cyrus the Great. Today, it is known as Iran.
During the Achaemenid Empire, people ate ice that was crushed and mixed with flavours, fruits, and toppings.
When Cyrus wasn’t conquering empires, he enjoyed a refreshing bowl of crushed ice. He probably wasn’t, but it’s fun to think about. After all, even warriors need a cool break!
Word of the ice-based dish eventually reached the kingdoms of Greece and Rome. While the Greeks used snow to cool wine, Roman emperors used ice to create desserts and drinks.
Rumour has it that Alexander the Great would send his soldiers to the nearest mountains to bring back snow so he could enjoy it with honey, milk, fruits, and wine.
Indulging in these frozen concoctions was a favourite pastime for the many Roman emperors that followed Alexander the Great, like Nero Claudius Caesar, who enjoyed the frozen treat with honey.
When Rome fell in 476 AD, the ice-based sweet almost fell with it.
Thankfully, under the Tang Dynasty, around 697 AD, the Chinese invented their own method of creating ice-based desserts.
China Breaks Ground, Not Ice
During the Tang Dynasty, the Chinese created a frozen dessert made with water buffalo milk, flour, and camphor, a powder made using the bark and wood of a camphor tree.
The founder of the Tang Dynasty, King Tang of Shang, had almost 100 men whose sole purpose was to carry ice to the palace to create this frozen dessert. Snow and ice were also used to make sweet juices.
Around the seventh century AD, the Chinese made a groundbreaking discovery. They discovered that saltpetre causes water to freeze at a lower temperature.
The Chinese originally used saltpetre to make gunpowder but quickly discovered other uses for the chemical compound.
By placing a vessel filled with water into a mixture of ice, water, and saltpetre, the Chinese were able to freeze liquids. Gone were the days of hauling snow and ice from the mountains.
Today’s equivalent of this process is ice cream in a bag, where a sealed bag is filled with a liquid ice cream mixture.
This bag is then placed into another bag filled with ice and salt. When shaken, the mixture solidifies, resulting in ice cream.
China laid the groundwork for ice cream, but Italy took the frozen dessert and transformed it into the ice cream we know and love today. The question is, how did the Italians do it?
One theory involves Chinese emperor Kublai Khan, who ruled the Yuan Dynasty from 1271 to 1294.
Kublai Khan loved the frozen dessert so much that he forbade his attendants from revealing its ingredients and instructions.
Until Marco Polo showed up. Marco Polo isn’t just famous for everyone’s favourite pool game and is supposedly responsible for bringing China’s frozen know-how back to Italy around 1300.
Marco Polo started his journey from Italy to China in 1271. During this time, he became Kublai Khan’s confidant, allegedly leading the emperor to spill the beans about China’s frozen dessert.
This theory is highly debated. The more believable story is that the Italians made a similar breakthrough independently.
In the 1560s, Blasius Villafranca, a Spanish physician living in Rome, discovered that mixing ice or snow with water and saltpetre would melt snow faster while freezing the dessert ice mixture.
Say It Ain’t Sorbet!
By the early 1600s, Italians were well versed in making water ices, or sherbets.
During the wedding of Venetian Catherine de’Medici to Henry II, the future king of France, in 1533, Italian chefs served sherbets to the French to highlight Italian sophistication.
However, the frozen dessert landscape completely changed when Antonio Latini was born in Coll’Amato, Italy, in 1642.
Latini was a steward of Cardinal Barberini, cardinal-nephew of Pope Urban VIII in Rome, and first minister to the Spanish Viceroy in Naples.
Latini was the founding father of the first “official” ice cream. He created a milk-based sorbet, referred to as Sorbetto, and most historians agree he was the first to do so.
Latini was also the first to write in detail about making and serving ice creams and was the author of Lo scalco alla moderna, which translates to The Modern Steward, one of the most extensive European culinary texts written before the end of the 17th century.
Finally, Ice Cream!
But how did the decadent dessert make it to North America? Unlike the Chinese, the Italians were spreading the secret of ice cream across Europe.
The frozen dessert saw massive popularity in England, and it is believed that European settlers, specifically Quakers from England, brought ice cream recipes with them to the Americas in the mid-1650s.
The first ice cream parlour in America was opened in 1777 in New York City by confectioner Philip Lenzi, who is also recognized as the first person to advertise ice cream as a product.
Ice cream also saw a huge popularity boost during Thomas Jefferson’s presidency. While president, he served ice cream in the executive mansion at least six times.
George Washington and Benjamin Franklin also enjoyed ice cream in their time.
For us Canadians, Thomas Webb of Toronto, Ontario was the first Canadian to start selling ice cream in Canada around 1850.
There are just as many stories about ice cream’s history as there are ice cream flavours, maybe even more! But one thing is for certain: ice cream is worth celebrating.
Enjoy National Ice Cream Day by indulging in a scoop or two of ice cream or maybe even a whole tub!
If you don’t know where to start, stay tuned for our list of best ice cream shops in Alberta.
