Ice cream (derived from earlier
iced cream or
cream ice) is a frozen dessert usually made from dairy products, such as milk and cream and often combined with fruits or other ingredients and flavours. Most varieties contain sugar, although some are made with other sweeteners. In some cases, artificial flavourings and colourings
are used in addition to, or instead of, the natural ingredients. The
mixture of chosen ingredients is stirred slowly while cooling, in order
to incorporate air and to prevent large ice crystals from forming. The result is a smoothly textured semi-solid foam that is malleable and can be scooped.
The meaning of the phrase "ice cream" varies from one country to another. Phrases such as "frozen custard", "frozen yogurt", "sorbet", "gelato"
and others are used to distinguish different varieties and styles. In
some countries, such as the United States, the phrase "ice cream"
applies only to a specific variety, and most governments regulate the
commercial use of the various terms according to the relative quantities
of the main ingredients.Products that do not meet the criteria to be called ice cream are labelled "frozen dairy dessert" instead.
In other countries, such as Italy and Argentina, one word is used for all variants. Analogues made from dairy alternatives, such as goat's or sheep's milk, or milk substitutes, are available for those who are lactose intolerant, allergic to dairy protein, or vegan. The most popular flavours of ice cream are vanilla and chocolate.
In the Persian Empire,
people would pour grape-juice concentrate over snow, in a bowl, and eat
this as a treat. This was done primarily when the weather was hot,
using snow saved in the cool-keeping underground chambers known as "yakhchal", or taken from snowfall that remained at the top of mountains by the summer capital — Hagmatana, Ecbatana or Hamedan of today. In 400 BC, the Persians went further and invented a special chilled food, made of rose water and vermicelli, which was served to royalty during summers. The ice was mixed with saffron, fruits, and various other flavours.
Ancient civilizations have served ice for cold foods for thousands of
years. The BBC reports that a frozen mixture of milk and rice was used
in China around 200 BC.The Roman Emperor Nero (37–68) had ice brought from the mountains and combined it with fruit toppings. These were some early chilled delicacies.
Arabs used milk as a major ingredient in the production of ice cream
[citation needed] and sweetened it with sugar rather than fruit juices. It was flavoured with rosewater, dried fruits and nuts.
Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat asserts, in her
History of Food, that "the Chinese may be credited with inventing a device to make sorbets and ice cream. They poured a mixture of snow and saltpetre
over the exteriors of containers filled with syrup, for, in the same
way as salt raises the boiling-point of water, it lowers the
freezing-point to below zero."
Some distorted accounts claim that in the age of Emperor Yingzong, Song Dynasty (960–1279) of China, a poem named
Ode to the ice cheese (詠冰酪) was written by the poet Yang Wanli. Actually, this poem was named
Ode to the pastry (詠酥; 酥 is a kind of food much like pastry in the Western world) and has nothing to do with ice cream.It has also been claimed that, in the Yuan Dynasty, Kublai Khan enjoyed ice cream and kept it a royal secret until Marco Polo visited China and took the technique of making ice cream to Italy.
In the sixteenth century, the Mughal emperors used relays of horsemen to bring ice from the Hindu Kush to Delhi, where it was used in fruit sorbets.
Spread to Europe
Italian duchess Catherine de' Medici, credited with introducing ice cream into Europe in the 16th century.
When Italian duchess Catherine de' Medici married the Duke of Orléans (Henry II of France) in 1533, she is said to have brought with her to France some Italian chefs who had recipes for flavoured ices or sorbets.
One hundred years later, Charles I of England was, it was reported, so impressed by the "frozen snow" that he offered his own ice cream maker a lifetime pension in return for keeping the formula secret, so that ice cream could be a royal prerogative.
There is no historical evidence to support these legends, which first appeared during the 19th century.
The first recipe in French for flavoured ices appears in 1674, in Nicholas Lemery’s
Recueil de curiositéz rares et nouvelles de plus admirables effets de la nature.
Recipes for
sorbetti saw publication in the 1694 edition of Antonio Latini's
Lo Scalco alla Moderna (The Modern Steward).
Recipes for flavoured ices begin to appear in François Massialot's
Nouvelle Instruction pour les Confitures, les Liqueurs, et les Fruits,
starting with the 1692 edition. Massialot's recipes result in a coarse,
pebbly texture. Latini claims that the results of his recipes should
have the fine consistency of sugar and snow.
Ice cream recipes first appeared in 18th-century England. The recipe for ice cream was published in
Mrs. Mary Eales's Receipts in London in 1718.
To ice cream.
Take Tin Ice-Pots, fill them with any Sort of Cream you like, either
plain or sweeten’d, or Fruit in it; shut your Pots very close; to six
Pots you must allow eighteen or twenty Pound of Ice, breaking the Ice
very small; there will be some great Pieces, which lay at the Bottom and
Top: You must have a Pail, and lay some Straw at the Bottom; then lay
in your Ice, and put in amongst it a Pound of Bay-Salt; set in your Pots
of Cream, and 93 lay Ice and Salt between every Pot, that they may not
touch; but the Ice must lie round them on every Side; lay a good deal of
Ice on the Top, cover the Pail with Straw, set it in a Cellar where no
Sun or Light comes, it will be froze in four Hours, but it may stand
longer; then take it out just as you use it; hold it in your Hand and it
will slip out. When you wou’d freeze any Sort of Fruit, either
Cherries, Rasberries, Currants, or Strawberries, fill your Tin-Pots with
the Fruit, but as hollow as you can; put to them Lemmonade, made with
Spring-Water and Lemmon-Juice sweeten’d; put enough in the Pots to make
the Fruit hang together, and put them in Ice as you do Cream.
Title page to
The Art of Cookery by Hannah Glasse.
However, the earliest reference to ice cream given by the
Oxford English Dictionary is from 1744, reprinted in a magazine in 1877.
1744
in Pennsylvania Mag. Hist. & Biogr. (1877) I. 126 Among the
rarities..was some fine ice cream, which, with the strawberries and
milk, eat most deliciously.
The 1751 edition of
The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse features a recipe for ice cream. OED gives her recipe:
H.
GLASSE Art of Cookery (ed. 4) 333 (heading) To make Ice Cream..set it
[sc. the cream] into the larger Bason. Fill it with Ice, and a Handful
of Salt. The year 1768 saw the publication of
L'Art de Bien Faire les Glaces d'Office by M. Emy, a cookbook devoted entirely to recipes for flavoured ices and ice cream.
Ice cream was introduced to the United States by Quaker colonists who brought their ice cream recipes with them. Confectioners sold ice cream at their shops in New York and other cities during the colonial era. Ben Franklin, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson were known to have regularly eaten and served ice cream. First Lady Dolley Madison
is also closely associated with the early history of ice cream in the
United States. One respected history of ice cream states that, as the
wife of U.S. President James Madison, she served ice cream at her husband's Inaugural Ball in 1813.
Small-scale handcranked ice cream freezer were invented in England by Agnes Marshall and in America by Nancy Johnson in the 1840s.
(Sumber: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cream)
