I Scream, You Scream

Hope you aren't reading this entry right before your lunch break

July has been National Ice Cream Month since Ronald Reagan made it official in 1984. But before you leave for the nearest ice cream parlor to celebrate, check out some fun facts are the history, manufacturing, and flavors of everybody's favorite tasty, summertime treat.

HISTORY:

-- Ice cream has a long and distinguished history. Shaved ice flavored with nectar was said to be a favorite dessert of Alexander the Great. (Snow was shipped in from the mountaintops.) Marco Polo brought back a recipe from the Orient for ice cream. And King Charles I served ice creams at his court in 17th century England (at least until he was executed).

-- George Washington once spent more than $200 on ice cream as a summertime treat.

-- Thomas Jefferson, also a fan of ice cream, introduced the "French" way of making ice cream: with eggs.

-- Modern ice cream as we know it today started showing up in the 1800s -- with the advent of commercial refrigeration.

-- "I scream, you scream: we all scream for ice cream!"  This well-known playground song actually had its roots on a college campus. The song was written originally recorded by Waring's Pennsylvanians, a choral group that was most popular on campuses. FUN FACT: the bandleader of the group was Fred Waring, who would go on to financially back the Waring Blendor -- the first modern electric blender on the market.

-- Multiple people can be credited with the invention of the ice cream cone. At least one of those is Ernest Hamwi, a waffle vendor at the 1904 St. Louis World Fair. The summer was hot and Hamwi was looking for a way to make his product more appealing. He promptly joined forces with the ice cream vendor in the next stall over, wrapping his waffles into a loose cone to hold a scoop of ice cream.

MANUFACTURING:

-- Based on overall sales, America's favorite flavor of ice cream is ... vanilla. (As a chocolate-lover, I don't understand this at all!)

-- How much ice cream do we eat every year?  1.5 gallons are produced in the U.S. alone.

-- Ice cream accounts for two-thirds of all of America's dairy sales.

-- It takes twelve pounds of whole milk to produce a gallon of ice cream.

FLAVORS: 

-- Gilroy, California prides itself on being the garlic-producing capital of the world ... and they serve the garlic-flavored ice cream to prove it!

-- Germany and Italy both serve cheese-flavored ice cream, which comes with ground-up spaghetti. (The Philippines also has many fans of cheese ice cream, albeit without the pasta.)

-- Many restaurants in France will flavor their plain ice cream with ... caviar. You can also buy foie gras-flavored at ice cream; the restaurant that serves it starts the price at about $150 a dish.

-- Goat-milk ice cream is very popular in Asia, sometimes complete with tiny pieces of goat meat.

-- In Japan, available flavors include squid ink, chewy octopus, horse meat, crab, sweet potato, curry, ox tongue, and chicken wing.

-- We've got our own unique flavors here in the USA, too. Sweetcorn has become a popular ice cream flavor in America., with people enjoying the crunchy corn kernels as toppings or by blending the corn in with the milk as the ice cream is prepared.

LINKS:

The History of Ice Cream -- from the Old Farmer's Almanac.

Ice Cream Trivia -- courtesy of the Meadows, Ms. B's hometown ice cream joint.

National Ice Cream Month -- headline news from the the International Dairy Foods Association.

Ben & Jerry's List of Flavors -- they've got everything from Cake Batter to Cherry Garcia.

Baskin-Robbins List of Flavors -- from baseball nut to watermelon chip.

-- Post by Ms. B