ICE CREAM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 March 1940, Page 8

ICE CREAM

ROMANTIC HISTORY. Today anybody with a penny to spend can buy an ice cream. Yet a few years agot—comparatively —ice cream was the dish of the rich and privileged. The story of ice cream starts like a fairy tale. There was one an apprentice in a confectionery shop, an Italian named Culbelli. He was an ambitious boy and experimented with new and exciting sweets in an effort to become famous. Yet it was by chance that he stumbled on the discovery which was to bring him fame. On an extremely hot day he poured a sweet drink into a glass and put small pieces of ice in the mixture. His idea was only to quench his thirst, but when he tasted the drink it was delicious. Culbelli developed his idea, and constructed a wooden vessel with a double bottom. Ho filled the lower part of the vessel with pieces of ice and the upper part with soft, sweet cream, then stirred the cream over the ice till it was frozen. The new cold dish was very soon famous. The former apprentice, now a master confectioner, became a rich man. He did not retire, but went from Italy to France, and about 1770 founded a cafe in Paris which attracted thousands.of customers by its excellent ice cream.’ From the beginning the production of ice cream was surrounded by mystery, and tiie few persons who had the recipe were anxious to keep it secret. When the ice cream was served here and there it was the highlight of the festival meal. The confectioners of the luxurious French Court knew of the delicious invention, and the famous chief cook Vatel is said to have been the first to mould ice cream in the shape of an egg, which was afterwards widely imitated. Ice cream was in particularly great favour at the elegant suppers arranged by the French aristocracy for actresses and other ladies of society in their secret villas in the outskirts of the capital, where champagne flowed and brilliant amusements were staged.

A French captain. Collet, aparently learned how to make ice cream on such an occasion. When he was compelled to migrate to the United States during the Revolution he was able to earn his living by selling the new sweet, and. like Culbelli, became an enormously rich man. At last it became impossible for the initiated to conceal the secret of how ice cream was prepared. Thirty years after the opening of Culbelli’s ice salon in Paris a Danzig confectioner published a book with 80 recipes, in which he recommended particularly creams with “flower and blossom taste.” Knowledge of the ice and snow for preserving food is much older. Alexander the Great is said to have built ice-holes when marching in India in order to preserve the provisions for his army, and in old Byzantium the commerce in snow and ice for such purposes was of great importance. The Roman author, Pliny, who lived in the first century A.D., published a work of 37 volumes called “Naturalia Historia,” in which he reported with amazement that “a means has been invented for producing ice even in the hottest month of the year.”