The lovely Jeri Quinzio says in the foreword that everyone's face lights up when they find out they're writing a book about ice cream! Ice cream is a big part of many people's happy childhood memories. Think of the sound of the bell on the ice cream van, or the sweet, cooling sensation of the ice cream in your hands after receiving it from your parents on a hot summer's day. Ice cream is a popular cold dessert, and it's easy to see why! People all over the world spend a whopping $60 billion on it every year.

But here's an interesting fact that many people don't know: until the late 19th century, ice cream was actually an expensive luxury. It wasn't until the mid to late 19th century, after the two industrial revolutions, that ice cream gradually became a mass daily consumer product. Jeri Quinzio has a lovely aim in writing this book. She wants to show us how social, economic and technological changes have affected our lives through the story of a small ice cream.

So, many of us are curious about how this wonderful cold drink came to be. The lovely Jeri Quinzio did a lot of research and found that the origin of ice cream has always been shrouded in a mysterious fog of history. At the same time, lots of out-of-the-box, even absurd legends have been born. Guess what! There are even records in the unofficial history books that say that Nero, the famous tyrant of ancient Rome, invented ice cream. It's said that he mixed honey with mashed ice to quench his thirst in the summer – imagine that! Some people even say that the famous Italian traveller and writer Marco Polo brought this magical dessert back from the Far East. Some people even say that in the 16th century, the magical ice cream followed the noble Florentine noblewoman Catherine de' Medici, who married into the royal family, from Italy to France, and then became popular in Europe. It's so interesting how these stories have evolved over time! While there are many different versions of how ice cream came to be, one thing is for sure: the first ice cream was created in Italy.

So, let's join Quinzio on his journey through time and space to discover the fascinating past and present of ice cream. First of all, let's see how ice cream, as a rare and wonderful treat, was introduced and improved by generations of famous chefs before the Industrial Revolution. And in the second part of the book, we'll go back to the era of the Industrial Revolution and see how ice cream entered millions of households and became a delightful everyday product we all know and love. And finally, we have a special treat for you! We've combined the contents of this book with other science-based health research. Our aim is to remind you that although ice cream is sweet and pleasant, it's probably best to limit your intake. This is because of the unique ingredients in its toppings.

A luxury food from Italy

Let's take a little trip back in time to Italy in the 17th century. Even though the Mediterranean Sea was no longer the main hub for global trade, the Italian city-states were still the envy of Europe, offering luxury and comfort to all who visited. The lovely Mediterranean climate meant that lots of lovely chilled drinks and desserts were the most popular food on the tables of the rich and powerful in Italy during the summer season. These ranged from chilled fruit juices and wines to creamy puddings and so on. By the mid-17th century, the first ever recipe for what we now know as modern ice cream was born! It was invented by a famous Neapolitan chef named Latini.

Let me tell you a little bit more about this amazing man. He was born poor, but he was very clever and hard-working. He was also very good at reading and writing. He started out as the chef and butler for the Roman Cardinal Barberini. He then moved to Naples, where he worked for the nobleman Salcedo as a servant. He developed a frozen dessert called "Milk Sorbet".

I'd love to know how he made this dessert, which at the time was considered a black art! The lovely Latini's method was to mix half a litre of milk with half a litre of water, then add three pounds of sugar and six ounces of chopped lemon preserves. Then, he quickly put the bottles and jars of these ingredients into an ice bucket, which is just a large container full of ice and salt mixtures. The ice-salt mixture is pretty amazing! Not only does it keep things nice and cool for a long time, but it also absorbs heat quickly. This wonderful chemical reaction magically transforms the ingredients in the jar into a frozen dessert with a texture somewhere between today's ice cream and custard pudding.

However, author Jeri Quinzio makes a lovely point. Perhaps Latini didn't invent sorbet. But he was one of the few celebrity chefs of his time who was both successful and had recipes that were passed down to the world. So, the laurels of the inventor of ice cream, or the originator of its production, fell fortunately to him.

As soon as sorbet was born, it quickly spread to the countries of Europe and was improved by local chefs and confectioners, who were so excited to try it out! Oh, and guess what? The English version of the term 'ice cream' was born in 1671! The lovely King Charles II of England held a grand banquet at Windsor Castle. At the party, this gorgeous, pricey dessert from Italy was served to the king.

It's so lovely that ice cream keeps getting better and better! This is thanks to the fact that lots of the ingredients used to make it are still being discovered as we explore more of the world and as technology gets better.

First up is sugar. Don't ever underestimate this go-to flavouring in the average person's kitchen today! It's hard to imagine now, but until the first half of the 17th century, sugar was an expensive luxury in Europe. That meant that only a few wealthy individuals were able to enjoy sweet treats such as cake confections, candies, and preserves. But then, with the European colonisation of the American continent, sugar cane plantations were set up on the islands of the Caribbean really quickly! Sugar cane is a local specialty, and it's a pretty amazing process! First, it's harvested and then processed into rough brown sugar right there in the islands of the Caribbean. Then, it's sailed across the ocean to European countries, where it's refined into crystal-clear, granular granulated sugar. The lovely folks in the Americas had lots of cane sugar, which meant there was plenty to go round and it didn't cost the earth. This made it easy for people in Europe to enjoy it as a common ingredient and flavouring.

We all love ice cream, and we all know that sugar is an essential ingredient! Take, for instance, the words of the renowned French chef Amy, who in 1768 observed that the quality of sugar is of the utmost importance when it comes to ice cream. If the sugar isn't pure enough, not only will the ice cream not taste as sweet as it should, but it'll also have an unpleasant gritty texture when you mix it with other ingredients and water. It's hard to imagine now, but before pure and cheap white granulated sugar was available in large quantities, cooks had to add an extra process to do sugar purification when making ice cream. This involved adding egg whites to the sugar water, boiling it, and then skimming off the floating impurities on the surface and filtering it through gauze. It was a very troublesome process!

And then there's vanilla, which we all know gives ice cream and other sweets that rich, sweet and distinctive flavour we all love! Guess what! As early as the 16th century, vanilla made its way to Europe from Mexico, which is in Central America today, via the Atlantic trade routes. But it wasn't until the 19th century that vanilla was planted on a large scale due to the development of artificial pollination. And other ingredients from the Americas and Africa, such as cocoa beans and coffee beans, have been added to ice cream by chefs seeking creativity to diversify the flavours of this trendy sweet.

Dessert chefs are always coming up with new and creative ways to make their ice cream creations more beautiful. They've even come up with some pretty cool techniques like pouring ice cream syrup into molds of all shapes and sizes while freezing them to create different shapes. They've also started using some pretty cool edible pigments like cochineal from an insect, the cochineal bug, and lemon yellow from saffron and garcinia cambogia. The dessert chef would mix these lovely pigments with syrup in a certain proportion, just like a colourist would, and then gently brush them onto the surface of the ice cream. Some dessert chefs are so talented that they can make ice cream that looks like a freshly picked peach! But when customers taste it, they realise it's not a peach at all.

As ice cream became more and more popular, lots of traditional taverns, cafes and restaurants across Europe added it to their menus. They did this to attract female customers and even children! The Café Tortoni in Paris is a great example of a place that's been a popular destination for Parisian high society since Napoleon became emperor. The regulars who loved to hang out there were almost a who's who of French politics, culture and art! They included Foreign Minister Talleyrand, famous poet Baudelaire, painter Manet, composer Rossini and writer Balzac, to name just a few. After 11 o'clock at night, the lovely Café Tortoni began serving a variety of delicious desserts. Wealthy fashionable Parisians would even retire early from the opera and arrive by horse-drawn carriage in order to get a table as early as possible. In Balzac's delightful series of novels, The Rise and Fall of the Sociable Man, which forms part of his magnificent work, The Human Comedy, we learn about the delicious ice cream served at the Café Tortoni. It was presented in a variety of shapes, including delicate crystal marquises, and topped with a medley of preserved fruits, crushed macaroons and nuts.

Ice cream was still a treat enjoyed by only a few people from the 17th to the 18th centuries. It's so interesting to think about how the techniques, flavours and shapes of ice cream were constantly evolving during this time! Oh, why is that? There are quite a few hurdles to overcome, the first of which is that the most basic raw material – ice – can't be produced on a large scale artificially. This means that the supply of ice cream has never been able to soar, and the price also remains high.

Ice was made in a similar way for thousands of years. During the winter, people collected natural ice from nature and then cut it into blocks. These blocks were stored in cool, airy rooms, which were like little ice caves! They were kept there until summer, when they were enjoyed by everyone.

To try to prevent the precious ice in the igloo from melting, engineers had lots of great ideas. One of these was to paint the igloo white as much as possible to reflect the sun's rays. The floor of the ice house is also laid on a thick sawdust or straw mat to help keep the ice nice and cool. And in the second industrial revolution, we got electricity! This was a big deal because it meant we could use all kinds of new, clean energy to power all sorts of cool, new machines. Eventually, some pretty amazing electrically driven cooling devices, like freezers and ice machines, came along in the second half of the 19th century. These amazingly efficient refrigeration devices led to the first large commercial ice houses that mined and stored natural ice. They first appeared in the United States and were capable of storing up to tens of thousands of tons of ice!

Even though it was quite expensive to make ice with electricity at first, people still preferred it because it was healthier and safer. As time went on, the price of chemical additives went down, and more and more people started using artificial ice. By 1920, the authors tell us that the whole of the United States was manufacturing a whopping 40 million tons of artificial ice in a single year! That's while natural ice production was only about 15 million tons. This is how ice, which was once expensive and hard to get, slowly became an everyday ingredient that even the average working person could afford to enjoy.

The good news is that the basic raw materials are no longer an issue. The next step is to work out the best way to produce it. From what we've seen so far, ice cream making was a very technical process in the days before industry. It was a real craft, requiring a lot of skill and time to perfect the flavour and texture. But then, along came the Industrial Revolution! This meant that machinery could be used to make ice cream, and in 1848, a hand-cranked ice cream machine was invented in Philadelphia, USA. The lovely Nancy Johnson was the one who invented it. Even if you don't have any special training, you can still make perfect ice cream with it! It's so easy to use, you'll be making a delicious treat in no time. People were amazed at how quickly it could mix the ice cream batter. They thought, "Wow, it's incredible!" At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the electric-powered ice cream machine was born.

The combination of affordable raw materials and highly efficient manufacturing machines paved the way for large-scale, intensive production in factories. At that time, in the lovely city of Baltimore in the USA, there was a wonderful man called Forsythe. He was a dairy producer and the first to see the business opportunities. In the hot summer months, fresh milk is difficult to store for a long time. At that time, Baltimore consumers had a lot of purchasing power and there was always a large amount of fresh milk that couldn't be sold. Rather than letting it go to waste, why not use it to make ice cream? So he had a great idea! He bought a bunch of big ice cream machines and opened his own ice cream factory. The huge scale of production effectively made ice cream affordable for everyone. In small cold drink stores, a kilogram of ice cream is sold for about 60 cents, while Forsythe's products cost less than half of this standard. In just a few years, this mode of production has been rapidly popularised in Europe. Those once high-end, expensive ice cafes and dessert stores gradually withdrew from the stage of history, and in their place, numerous cheap ice cream outlets in grocery stores and sub stores and mobile vendors pushing carts popped up. On the streets of London, you'll find a delicious treat that'll make your taste buds dance with joy! A two-inch-square, half-inch-thick brick of ice cream wrapped in cheap paper sells for as little as one penny.

And let's not forget America's other wonderful contribution to ice cream: the cone! That's the one we all know and love today. Have you ever wondered how the cone became the iconic container for ice cream? It turns out that it's actually a thin pancake made with flour, sugar, and butter, and it comes in a variety of shapes, including, of course, cones! These lovely baked, crispy quiches are also known as waffles. Guess what? Waffles were used in medieval times as part of the communion for churchgoers. There are two main versions of how cone ice cream came to be, and they both have a lovely story behind them. One of them takes place at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair site. The first version is a lovely story about a waffle vendor named Hamwee. She was selling waffles at the site and noticed that the vendor next door didn't have enough containers to hold the ice cream he was selling due to the number of customers. She had a brilliant idea! She let him put the ice cream in her cone-shaped waffle cones and sold them for a higher price. And the second version is that another waffle vendor on the expo floor, named Duma, came up with this brand new dessert recipe.

And finally, the home refrigerator helped us all enjoy ice cream more often! Ice cream is such a delight, but it does melt easily and, if you buy too much, it's tricky to store. This meant that early consumers bought it in small amounts, just enough for one serving. By the mid to late 19th century, more and more folks in American and European households were getting their hands on a nifty little refrigerator called an "ice box" to keep their food nice and fresh. The lovely "ice box" was a metal box with an open door and space for ice at the bottom and top to keep food nice and cool. The lovely centre compartment, where all your delicious food is placed, is covered with a metallic zinc coating that keeps it nice and cool. To keep the ice nice and cool, the "ice box" is also filled with sawdust or wood chips. Of course, the ice box was great for storing meats and vegetables in the summer, but unfortunately, it wasn't quite cold enough to keep the ice cream from melting. I wonder if ice cream factories and large ice factories didn't use motorised freezers at the time? I wonder why ordinary folks didn't buy a freezer?

First of all, there were some technical limitations at the time that made it really difficult for large freezers to become an affordable household appliance for ordinary people. Secondly, at that time, the refrigerant was mainly ammonia or sulfur dioxide and other gases. These are not only flammable and explosive, but also harmful to the human body. In the empty factory cold storage, an occasional leakage or explosion would only cause limited loss. However, in the compact space of the family kitchen, this means a huge risk. It wasn't until the 1920s that something truly amazing happened! Smaller, more nimble and compact air compressors, as well as Freon, a non-toxic, non-flammable refrigeration gas, made the birth of the family refrigerator possible. The refrigerator was a real game-changer! It meant that people could buy larger boxes of ice cream and enjoy them at home, which led to a huge increase in ice cream sales. In the US alone, more than 70 million gallons of ice cream were produced in 1914, which is about 260,000 tons!

The "Sweet Killer" of Health Threats

In a nutshell, by the 1920s, ice cream had become a popular, inexpensive summer treat for people of all ages. Guess what! It's official. We Americans eat more ice cream than anyone else in the world. In fact, we eat more than 20 kilograms of ice cream each year. That's a lot of ice cream! But as ice cream has become more and more popular, people have started to worry about the health problems it can cause.

Firstly, there are concerns about food safety when it comes to how it's handled and processed. It's so sad to think that at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, there just weren't the same food safety rules and regulations in place as there are today. Back then, dairy products were often contaminated with bacteria and other nasties because there wasn't the same level of hygiene and disinfection technology. Many dairy companies were operating in poor conditions, with dirty processing plants and little oversight. Some even bought milk from sick cows, thinking it was a way to cut costs. It's so important to remember that we've come a long way since then and we can now enjoy delicious dairy products without worrying about getting sick. It's so sad, but these cows often contain large amounts of various types of streptococci, as well as tuberculosis and diphtheria bacilli and other pathogens. As a result, the hot season, when ice cream is a big hit, is also the time of year when epidemics and overcrowding in public health care facilities are at their peak.

So, governments are starting to introduce new laws to make sure food is safe to eat. One of the first of these was the Pure Food and Drugs Act, which was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1906. Another was a female bacteriological research expert named Pennington, who was commissioned by the City of Philadelphia to survey and research the dairy industry in the Philadelphia region from 1908 onwards. Pennington was a real hero! She suggested that the City of Philadelphia introduce a special bill on dairy sanitation. This was a great idea because it meant that businesses and health agencies could regularly check that dairy farmers were producing safe milk. They could also use pasteurisation to treat raw materials in dairy production. It wasn't long before other state governments copied and adopted Philadelphia's set of regulations for dairy production and sanitation.

By 1958, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had introduced a new regulation that placed some pretty strict limits on the ingredients in manufactured ice cream. For example, all ice cream must be at least 10 percent cream, must have more than 1.6 pounds of solids per gallon of ice cream, and cannot replace cream with excess water. When it comes to flavoured ice cream, it's really important to make sure that natural fruit flavours are used. And it's also a great idea to let people know which artificial colouring ingredients have been added to the flavouring, so they can make the best choice for themselves.

The lovely folks at the FDA also made sure to announce that the coagulants used in ice cream production are limited to food gelatin, guar gum, and a few other types. This is to make sure that ice cream is safe for everyone to enjoy! We all love a nice, smooth ice cream, but sadly, some emulsifiers that were used in the past to make it taste just so are now off the menu. Why? Well, according to animal experiments, eating lots of these ingredients over a long period of time can cause some pretty unpleasant problems like diarrhoea, kidney stones and other diseases.

It's also worth mentioning that even if you meet all the quality and hygiene standards, ice cream isn't technically considered a "healthy" snack. In the early days of ice cream, it slowly became a popular treat. But back then, people were worried that all that sweet, cool ice cream might not be good for us. Many European city workers, for example, didn't have time to cook. They'd give their kids a little money to buy ice cream instead. Unfortunately, this led to a lot of children getting sick, including tooth decay.

Ice cream looks so delicious and sweet, but it's actually a terrible calorie killer. It's no surprise that ice cream often contains more than 15 percent sugar, which is at least 50 percent higher than many sweetened soft drinks! This is the number one culprit when it comes to dental caries, obesity, uric acid and other health issues. It's also worth noting that the higher the quality and soft, rich texture of the ice cream, the higher the fat content. For example, Häagen-Dazs ice cream is more than 17% fat. While you're enjoying that cool treat, you're actually putting excess cholesterol and saturated fat into your body on a continuous basis.

On top of that, lots of ice cream manufacturers are now using margarine in their products, which is made from hydrogenated vegetable oil. This ingredient is full of trans-fatty acids, which we really need to be careful with. Trans fatty acids are closely related to various heart diseases and are also a big cause of obesity.

On top of that, eating ice cream and other foods with a lot of sugar and fat can make you feel like you need to keep eating more. This is because the brain reward area secretes less dopamine and other hormones, which makes you unconsciously choose to eat more to get the same pleasure as the day before.

And finally, let's have a little fun and talk about a less serious, but widespread, ice cream-related condition: the ice cream headache, also known as a "brain freeze". If you've ever had the misfortune of experiencing an ice cream headache, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about! It's that sudden, intense headache you get when you take a big bite of ice cream to cool off. The good news is that the process behind this is pretty straightforward. When ice cream and other cold foods reach the back of our mouth or the top of our throat, the rapid contraction and expansion of small blood vessels sends a signal to the brain, which is in charge of everything, that something is wrong. The brain then sends a signal to the body that something is wrong, and we get that annoying headache. In the heat of the moment, our clever brains can sometimes get a little mixed up. They think the discomfort is in our heads, so we reach for cold food or drinks and get a sudden headache. Another medical explanation is that cold drinks and food make the blood vessels near our palate contract, which slows down the flow of blood to the brain. The pressure receptors near the blood vessels immediately tell the brain about this change. To make sure the brain has a plentiful supply of blood, the heart increases the blood transfusion to the brain. This causes the dilated blood vessels to compress the nerves near the brain, which can trigger a headache.

So, what can we do to prevent and treat those pesky ice cream headaches? It's really quite simple! If you've got a headache, just use your hands to massage the painful area a few times. At the same time, you can roll up your tongue, press the upper jaw of the mouth, or cover your mouth and nose with your hands and breathe quickly. These techniques can really help to ease the pain! If you have a history of high blood pressure and heart disease, it's best to eat as little as possible and to take it easy with ice cream. Eating too fast or too much can cause blood pressure fluctuations or even angina and other diseases, which can be dangerous for your health.

And that, my friends, is a wrap on the main content of this book, Of Sugar and Snow! In this book, the lovely Jeri Quinzio uses her years of research on the history of the human diet to give us a fascinating account of how ice cream has evolved over the past five hundred years. It's a story of how this delicious treat has gone from being a niche and expensive European luxury food to a globally favoured and inexpensive summer cold drink.

There's a lovely simplicity to looking at history through food. It's so easy to understand! A little ice cream cone is a great symbol of how, over the past 500 years, human life has benefited from economic production and scientific and technological progress. It's amazing to see how we've continued to prosper and become more abundant! It's hard to imagine, isn't it? The ingredients for ice cream, such as sugar, dairy products and ice, were scarce and limited in supply in the pre-industrial era. This was because large-scale manufacturing and extraction techniques were lacking. But then, something really amazing happened! The Age of Discovery and the Scientific Revolution changed everything. First, there was sugar cane, which grew in abundance in the Caribbean region of the Americas. Then, there was beet, which was a specialty of mainland Europe. These two ingredients provided humans with cheap and high-quality sugar. Then, vanilla, coffee, cocoa, and other ingredients from the Americas and Africa gave ice cream other rich and attractive flavors. The Industrial Revolution was a real game-changer! It gave us access to a whole range of new energy sources, from coal to electricity, as well as mechanical productivity. Thanks to electricity, we could make ice cream in so many different ways! From ice-making machines to dairy production line factories and cold chain transportation logistics systems, we could do so much more with ice cream than we could before. And it was so much cheaper! We could make ice cream in different ways, and it was easier to store and transport. It was a really popular treat!

Jeri Quinzio made a lovely point. After the middle of the 20th century, ice cream, which had already become a global favourite, took on even more meaning. It became a symbol of a good and stable life. Take the Second World War, for instance. The US government announced the introduction of a wartime economic system, but they also wanted to keep people feeling positive and upbeat, so they included ice cream in the seven types of food that would be supplied every day. The good news is that there were only a few restrictions on ice cream production. The only thing was that the fat content had to be a little bit lower, and manufacturers couldn't make too many different flavours. For our brave American soldiers on the battlefields of the Pacific and Europe, ice cream was a much-loved treat that could lift their spirits just as much as tobacco and Coca-Cola. According to the rules, each person was given a monthly allowance of 2.5 litres of ice cream.

And let's not forget that ice cream has also become a firm favourite with teenagers and young lovers thanks to the power of mass entertainment and commercial advertising. Take Audrey Hepburn's performance in the movie Roman Holiday, for example. She made gelato, a specialty of Italian handmade ice cream, and the Spanish Square, a tourist attraction, into must-visit items when sightseeing in Rome.

However, as our lives have improved and medical technology has advanced, we've started to understand that eating too much ice cream over a long period of time can be harmful. It can lead to various health problems, from obesity and cardiovascular disease to gastrointestinal problems. So, while ice cream is delicious and we all love it, it's important to enjoy it in moderation!