sweets

Ice Cream: Expansion and Popularity

Around the Mediterranean, ice cream appears to have been a fairly accessible food from the first half of the 18th century.

In England, it became popular and cheap in the middle of the following century when, in 1851, the Swiss emigrant Carlo Gatti established the first kiosk outside the Charing Cross station, where he sold ice cream in small cups for a penny.

Before him, ice cream was very expensive and therefore limited only to those who boasted a method to preserve ice. Gatti built an "ice well" to prolong the life of the ice, purchased by the "Regent's Canal Company". In 1860, he expanded his business and began importing large-scale ice from Norway.

Agnes Marshall, considered the "Queen of the ice", had an essential role in the spreading of ice cream recipes in England and in the promotion of its consumption also to the popular middle class. He wrote four books: Ices Plain and Fancy: The Book of Ices (1885), Mrs. AB Marshall's Book of Cookery (1888), Mrs. AB Marshall's Larger Cookery Book of Extra Recipes (1891) and Fancy Ices (1894); he held public conferences of gastronomic interest and first suggested using liquid nitrogen in the production of this food.

In 1870 the soda was invented, which made the ice cream even more popular. The idea of ​​this recipe is hypothetically attributable to the American Robert Green, in 1874, although there is no written evidence to prove its veracity.

The "sundae" ice cream was invented in the late nineteenth century. In several they proclaimed themselves "inventors" of this delicacy, but in reality no one offered tangible evidence to prove it. Some sources claim that the ice cream was designed to circumvent the "blue laws", which at the time forbade serving drinks on Sundays. Among the cities that could have given birth to the sundae include: Buffalo, Two Rivers, Itaca and Evanston. Both the ice cream cone and the Banana Split became famous in the 20th century.

The first trace of the cone, used as an edible container for ice cream, is in the "Mrs. AB Marshall's Book of Cookery "of 1888. The ice cream cone was popularized in the United States at the World's Fair in St. Louis, MO, in 1904.

In the twentieth century, the history of ice cream changed greatly; increased accessibility and consequently the popularity of the food, which began to be served in many commercial activities. In the United States, in the early twentieth century, during the American prohibition, the "fountain soda" replaced bars and saloons.

Ice cream has become popular around the world in the second half of the 20th century, after the invention and spread of low-cost refrigeration. The consequence was a veritable explosion of artisan gelato shops. Vendors competed based on the number of tastes and varieties on offer to the public.

The introduction of "soft ice cream", which involves the use of gases in the mixture in order to reduce production costs, represented a further methodological revolution. It has made possible the invention of the automatic machine for soft ice cream, thanks to which the cone is filled by placing it under a tap operated by the operator. In the United States, Dairy Queen, Carvel and Tastee-Freez were pioneers of soft ice cream sales points.

Technological innovations such as this have allowed the introduction of many food additives; one is gluten (as a stabilizing agent) but, being potentially the object of intolerance, many producers have started to exclude it from the recipes.