Fishing on the Net
By Bonnie Nelson
Chocolate, Vanilla, Neopolitan
Itís ice cream! How many of us remember the days of churning your own ice cream. I can. On hot summer days, we would get out the hand-cranked ice cream machine and we would crank and crank four hours to get that creamy, homemade taste.
It is thought that the Chinese are credited with inventing a device to make sorbets and ice cream. They poured a mixture of snow and saltpeter over the exteriors of containers filled with syrup. It is said that Marco Polo observed the practice and brought the recipes home to Italy. But it is said that Francois I's daughter-in-law, Catherine de Medici, brought the fashion for sorbets to France. It soon spread from privileged tables to the middle classes when coffee houses became popular in the eighteenth century (http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodicecream.html).
After the dessert was imported to the United States, several famous Americans George Washington and Thomas Jefferson served it to their guests. Thomas Jefferson imitated one recipe by having a special cold room for storing snow. Not to be outdone, George Washington invested in one of the ice cream machines (http://www.essortment.com/all/historyicecrea_ori.htm).
Ice cream was made by hand in a large bowl. The bowl was placed inside a tub filled with ice and salt. This was called the pot-freezer method. The temperature of the ingredients is reduced by the crushed ice and salt. The ice cools the salt water causes the mixture to go below the freezing point of pure water. The hand-cranked churn also uses ice and salt for cooling. The exact origin of the hand-cranked freezer is unknown, but the first U.S. patent for one was #3254 issued to Nancy Johnson in 1843.
Here are some fun facts about ice cream.
* Americans consume the most ice cream in the world per capita, with Australians coming in second. In 1924, the average America ate eight pints a year.
* In 1999, it was reported that people in Omaha, Nebraska, ate more ice cream per person than any other Americans.
* Vanilla is the most popular flavor in this country, snagging anywhere from 20 to 29 percent of sales. Chocolate comes in a distant second, with about 9 to 10 percent of the market.
Today, you can jump in the car, go buy an ice cream cone, or you can buy an ice cream machine and make your own concoctions. Whichever method you like, enjoy every mouthful.
Bonnie Nelson is a freelance writer living in Fountain, CO. If you have any comments or questions, email her at waltbon@comcast.net
CONTACT THE WRITER • WALTBON@COMCAST.nET
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