15 Chillingly Fun Facts About Ice Cream

How long do you think ice cream has been saving humanity on hot summer days? For many centuries. No one knows for sure the story of how ice cream was discovered, but it likely dates back at least as far as the fourth century BCE. Of course, it wasn’t the ice cream we know today.

Alexander the Great, the king of Macedonia, would enjoy snow and ice covered in honey and nectar. That’s the early ice cream. The Roman Emperor, Nero Caesar, was eating snow flavored with fruits and juices. How would those guys get snow if they lived in very warm climates?

Well, their helpers would run up a nearby mountain to bring some from up there. I’m not sure how they were dealing with it without a refrigerator, but I guess they had ways. Some historians say that there were deep pits covered with straw, and the snow was stored there after harvesting it from the mountains. How it didn’t melt on the way to the pit remains a mystery to me. But history has many of those.

Okay, so far, it’s been just ice and snow, but we all know it’s not the ice cream we’re used to. One of the main ingredients of the dessert we know today is milk. And this one most likely appeared in China around the 7th century CE.

Back then, the Tang dynasty was ruling the country, and the emperors probably were the first ones to eat ice cream that contains milk. Back then, it was made from buffalo, goat, or cow milk. To enhance the flavor and aroma, they were adding camphor to it. Then, metal tubes would be filled with the mixture and stored in an ice pool to freeze.

Let’s leave China for a little bit and move to the Arab world during medieval times. Time to observe what frosty treats they eat there. They used to drink icy refreshments — the earlier versions of sherbet. There, they were typically made of pomegranate, cherry, or quince.

Soon after, the Europeans picked it up, and it became popular in Europe too. The Italians and the French are the ones who especially adored it, so they took it from there and perfected it into their own versions.

In the 17th century, Antonio Latini became the first person to officially record a recipe for his sorbetto — it contained fruits, ice, but also sugar, and milk. This is the recipe that most culinary historians consider to be the first official ice cream. The Italians perfected their own type of sorbet, called gelato. In Italian, it means “frozen”.

No one is sure about who exactly invented gelato, but everyone knows the guy who opened the first café in Paris and started selling it. An Italian guy from Sicilia opened his “Il Procope” in 1686, and the café became a favorite meeting place for famous intellectuals at that time.

That’s how the French were first introduced to the Italian gelato which was sold in porcelain bowls resembling egg cups. But you have to remember one important thing: never call gelato ice cream, especially in front of Italians. Even though these two might seem similar, there are many significant differences. Gelato contains way less fat, less air, and the flavor is more intense, and it’s also served warmer than ice cream.

So, that’s the Italian way. The French have perfected their own frozen dessert — the “fromage” [fro-maj]. This translates from French as “cheese”, but, in fact, it has nothing to do with it. Originally, it was made of cream, sugar, and orange flower water. Even today, the cream is an important ingredient, so the fromage is creamier and heavier than a gelato.

Also, did you know that eggs are used to produce both? Yes, it is an important gelato and fromage ingredient that gives the dessert the necessary fat, but also a specific flavor. We haven’t covered America yet. Most likely, ice cream was brought to the USA by European immigrants.

The first ice cream parlor in the States opened in 1790 in New York, but until the beginning of the next century, it was only available to the elite. But once it became more common, of course, it took over the country — it couldn’t be any other way, could it?

When NASA astronauts were asked what they missed most, ice cream was at the top of the list. Today, 9% of all produced cow milk in the USA is used to produce ice cream. The people who love ice cream most in the world live in New Zealand: the country is the biggest per capita ice cream consumer in the world. The second one is the United States.

What do you think the most popular ice cream flavor is? Yeah, that’s vanilla of course. The second most popular flavor is chocolate. Turns out, chocolate ice cream was invented earlier: that’s because vanilla wasn’t available for a long time. Today, most vanilla is imported from Indonesia and Madagascar.

Today, over 1,000 ice cream flavors exist. There are quite a few really weird ones, like hot dog flavor, bacon, avocado, licorice, octopus, jellyfish flavor, and even roasted garlic. Then, there’s also cheese ice cream, and it’s a real and very common thing in the Philippines.

The Philippines only got ice cream in the 19th century, but it wasn’t widely available until a whole century after that. After refrigeration became widespread, an American opened the first ice cream parlor in the country, serving ice cream of three flavors: vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry. Soon after, many more people started producing the frozen treat, incorporating locally available products, like mango, avocado, and coconut.

Instead of cow milk, Filipinos traditionally use milk from domestic water buffalo, which is also used to make white cheese. In the second half of the 20th century, cheddar cheese was first imported to the Philippines, and it became an instant favorite. It’s the ingredient of the famous Filipino spaghetti, and a common topping for pastries. Without thinking long, they combined their favorite cheese with their favorite dessert — ice cream, and they got an amazing, creamy-salty-sweet cheese ice cream.

So yes, that’s a long story. We mentioned iced drinks, sherbet, and ice cream, but there was no word about popsicles. That’s right, popsicles didn’t exist for a long time. In fact, they were only invented by accident in 1905 by an 11-year-old boy called Frank Epperson.

On a cold night, he was mixing sugary soda powder with water and forgot it outside after. After sitting there all night, it got frozen. When the boy returned and found it, he had to lick it off the wooden stick he was stirring it with. He liked it so much that he started producing them. He called them “Epsicles”, honoring his own name, but later the name evolved into a popsicle.

Ice cream cones were invented just a year before popsicles, in 1904. So, a guy was selling waffle-like pastries at a fair. Right next to him, there was another guy selling ice cream. At some point, the ice cream guy ran out of dishes and didn’t know what to do. So, his neighbor rolled his waffle and offered to sell ice cream in them.

The history of ice cream isn’t even finished yet. Frozen treats keep being invented even today. For example, Slurpees were only invented in the late 1950s. Omar Knedlik was working at Dairy Queen in Kansas City, and the soda fountain broke down.

To keep the beverages cool, he put them in a freezer. They turned slushy, and that’s how the guy got the idea to make a machine that makes frozen beverages. He even created the Icee name and designed a logo for the brand. Several years later, 7-Eleven bought the right to sell the drinks, and they got popular.

The newest ice cream-like invention is Dippin dots. In 1988, a microbiologist wanted an easier way to feed cows, so he started to freeze cow feed. Then he thought a little bit more and figured that you can freeze other food, not only cow feed. So, he started to freeze ice cream, and it was a blast.

That’s it for today. Maybe you can come up with something too, and will forever be imprinted in the ice cream history like all these heroes we mentioned today.