How ancient is the ice cream?

The first ICE CREAM.

The first ICE CREAM authenticated reterence to in Britain, appears in the accounts of the Lord Steward’s Department for 1686, itemizing 12 dishes of ice cream at £ 1 per dish for James II and his officers, who were in camp at Hounslow Heath. Much controversy surrounds the origins of ice cream, and its true history had been obscured by claims that it was eaten by Alexander the Great, Nero and the Egyptian Pharaohs. These, and others of the ancients, were fond of confections made with, or chilled by, snow, but this was not ice cream. It appears that the sorbet, or water ice, was introduced in Florence in the 16th century, and travelled thence to France. In 1660 an Italian called Procopio Cultelli who was then working as a lemonade vendor in Paris, took the first step towards mechanization when he contrived a special churn for the manufacture of ices. This he employed for making a sorbet from chilled lemonade. Dairy ice cream was first introduced to France in the 18th century by the proprietor of the Parisian coffee-house Le Caveau, who had the arms of the Duke of Chartres, one of his most distinguished patrons, sculpted in ice cream in 1774. He popularized the dish under the name of ‘iced butter’.

The available evidence points towards Britain as the birthplace of dairy ice cream. Charles I had a French chef, Gerald Tissain, who prepared iced desserts which seem to have been made with milk or cream, and who was awarded an annual pension of £ 20 for life in recognition of his efforts.

In Britain the introduction of factory-made ice cream was delayed by the ready availability of cheap ices from hokey-pokey men, which began with the large influx of Italian immigrants after 1865. The street sale of ice cream had, however, started in a small way at a somewhat earlier date. Henry Mayhew, in his London Labour and the London Poor, which was published in 1851, notes the ‘novel and aristocratic luxury of icecream parlours.