Ice Cream Habit Grows

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 165, 3 October 1927, Page 12

Ice Cream Habit Grows

Great Delicacy In United States Americans are a nation of ice-cream caters. They acquire the habit early in youth, when mosts habits, good and bad, are acquired. Ice cream was once considered a dish for summer alone; now it is an all-year refreshment. It is eaten, moreover, at all hours, even at breakfast, as an early morning visit to any soda fountain will prove. Indeed, ice cream seems to have taken the place at breakfast of the pie. for which America was once reproached by foreign critics. Much ingenuity has been used to make Americans eat ice cream. One may have ice cream straight, or as a sundae, or in soda, or as a sandwich. And one may have ice cream in a cone or between layers of chocolate—when it becomes “Eskimo pie.*’ Ice cream provides the historian with ample opportunity for research, for of the origin of this delicacy little is« surely known. According to the encyclopaedias, ice cream was introduced into France from Italv in 1559. Germany and England also were enjoying it at about the same time, but whence it originally came is a matter of conjecture. In 1786, it is said, the first advertisement for ice cream appeared in the United States. And Mrs. Alexander Hamilton is reported to have been the first hostess to serve her guests this frozen dessert. In 1851 Jacob Fussell, of Baltimore, started, it i» said, the first American wholesale ice cream trade. Since then the industry has grown to the point 'where it is considered one of the greatest of the dairy industry. Proof of its chart-giving status is further to be found in the fact that in 1926 England acknowledged ice cream as a staple food apart from the class of luxuries, following in the steps of America.

Since the advent of prohibition ice cream has become more popular than ever before. Chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry are the flavours most in demand. The business of dispensing ice cream and ice cream sodas and the allied soft drinks is slangily known as “soda jerking.” Soda dispensing, like many other vocations, has a terminology peculiar to itself. For instance, a chocolate soda with vanilla ice cream is known as a “black and white,” with chocolate ice cream it is called “an all black.” The names attached to a sundae, which is usually a ball of ice cream surrounded with syrup, whipped cream, nuts, cherries, or what not, are sometimes misleading and often strange. “Broadway,” “Merry Widow’," “Orphans’ Delight,” “Banana Royal,” and “Chop Suey” are some of the sundae names.

Ice cream, so easy to swallow, is not so easy to make. A number of bulletins from the Department of Agriculture show its complex mixture., and the effect of using too much of any one ingredient.