I'm not being disingenuous: the impression was indeed like meeting an old friend. True, fate's twists haven't yet taken me to Hawaii, but "Hawaiian snow" - also known as shave ice, that is, "shaved ice" - is plentiful in the continental United States. And I've encountered it in Europe too. Only there it increasingly disguises itself under the names frappé or sorbet. In short, I felt that the time had come to write about ice cream.
Although in the summer heat there are plenty of publications on the sweet-cold topic as it is. From one magazine to another wander slaves who delivered ice from mountain slopes to the table of either Nero or Alexander the Great; Chinese emperors; Marco Polo, who brought the secret of their cold desserts to Europe; Catherine de Medici, who made the delicacy popular in Europe, and the confectioner of the English king Charles I, who received 500 pounds a year from the monarch for not divulging the secret of ice cream.
True, the fascination with unusual flavors cannot be called a sign of the new century. As early as 1790, one cookbook gave recipes for ice cream with ginger, black bread, and Parmesan. The latter, by the way, was revived in the late 1960s, of course, in Italy. And now the famous chef Ferran Adrià offers it on his signature menu as an antipasto appetizer. Though vanilla ice cream remains the most popular all over the world...
Meanwhile, Marco Polo most likely never visited China at all, Charles I did not pay an annual rent of half a thousand pounds to any of his cooks, and Catherine de Medici had practically nothing to do with it. The history of ice cream is much more complex and interesting.
In the beginning was... what exactly?
And to understand it, it is appropriate to turn to those very Chinese emperors. In this case, historians can be believed: during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 BC) a frozen dessert prepared using a fairly complex technology was served at the highest table. Buffalo, cow, and goat milk was mixed with crushed rice, heated, and fermented, then sweetened, flour added for thickness, and camphor (!) for aroma, and cooled on ice with saltpeter. Saltpeter, like salt, was later used in Europe and America to speed up the cooling of the final product - although in this case the ice had to be replenished every 8-10 minutes.
In principle, the Chinese sweet was indeed the first ice cream. Although heavily chilled desserts have always been present in European gastronomic practice. Recall Nero and Alexander the Great. They indeed loved to indulge in frosty sweets, as did many other ancient rulers.
Sherbet, sorbet, frappé...
You can love or dislike Americans, but what you cannot deny them is their zealous veneration of ice cream in all its forms. And therefore the American classification is more complete and better thought out than any other. According to it, all ice cream is divided into several large groups: ice milk (fat content less than 10% and reduced sugar content), ice cream (fat content more than 10%), ice custard (fat content more than 10%, the recipe includes egg yolks), sherbet (1-2% fat content and increased sugar content), sorbet (made from natural products without using milk), pop (frozen fruit juice). In our everyday usage, all this diversity is described by a single word - "ice cream". It's clear where the confusion comes from...
The American classification is good in every way except one: those very sherbet-sorbets, which have not gone out of popularity since the times of Alexander the Great. That is, their essence is simple, but the terminology is more complicated. The word "sherbet" is derived from the Arabic "sharbat", and sorbetto, sorbet, and sorbet are further modifications of it.
Let's leave aside English-speaking countries - there, if you're craving sweet snow, you'd better ask not for sherbet but for snow cone, snowball, or that very shave ice with which we started the conversation. You definitely won't miss.
And in Europe, if you want to refresh yourself with the same thing, it's better to look on the menu for sorbet or frappé. The first will most likely be made with milk and in general impression resemble the memorable fruit ice cream for seven kopecks. The second is honest fruit ice, only finely finely crushed, sometimes with some additional flavoring. Or even with alcohol - it's not forbidden.
Italian roots
But God forbid you call the national Italian delicacy granita a frappé. At the very least you will be misunderstood, at worst you will be drenched with contempt, and most likely you will be told that granita is granita, and any old frappés are nothing but pathetic imitations. Italians are convinced that it was from their territory - to be more precise, from Sicily - that the triumphant march of ice cream across countries and continents began. The Italian version looks like this: in the 9th century, Arabs brought sherbet to Sicily along with the banner of the Prophet (in liquid, not confectionery form), the delicacy took root - fortunately, Etna provided a steady supply of ice. Then the Sicilians learned to mix snow with fruit juice in such a way that the mass did not freeze together and did not disintegrate into separate crystals.
Further, the Italian version of the history of ice cream's arrival in Europe becomes somewhat vague. They say, they made granita and made granita, and then - bam! Out of nowhere they decided to freeze crema rinforzata - a mixture of milk, sugar, and starch. Judging by the fact that the starch in traditional crema rinforzata is cornstarch, it dawned on the descendants of the Romans no earlier than the 16th century - before Columbus, as is known, corn simply did not exist in Europe...
What caused the unexpected qualitative leap is not entirely clear. But the Italians insist: it was from the Apennine Peninsula that ice cream began its journey through the Old World. Historians, in principle, do not object: unlike the confectioners of Charles I, the Palermo native Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli was a real figure. In 1686, he opened the Café Procope in Paris (which, by the way, still exists and is considered the oldest café in the world), whose main attractions were coffee and ice cream.
European presentation...
More precisely, not ice cream, but gelato - the Italians are sure that these two concepts should not be mixed under any circumstances. Gelato (both in the time of Francesco Procopio and today) contains less fat, is churned less intensely during preparation, and is not frozen as hard. Therefore, compared to, say, American ice cream, it is much lighter and more expressive in taste. And now Italian-style ice cream rules the roost throughout Europe.
Meanwhile, in the 17th-18th centuries, no one in France, England, or Germany wanted to hear about any lightness. Taking gelato as a base, European chefs soon retained little more than the basic principle of cooling the product: spinning the container with it in a vessel of salted ice, then stirring, then spinning again... An extremely labor-intensive process, and it is no surprise that until the era of industrialization, ice cream was accessible only to the cream of society.
And this cream took a liking to dairy cream. French confectioners first added this cream to the Italian recipe, then egg yolks, then thought of heating the whole thing for greater homogeneity... The result was a dessert as sweet as it was filling.
...and the American impact
It was this thick, European version that eventually settled in the New World. It settled seriously and for good: the American contribution to the popularization of ice cream cannot be overestimated. The Founding Fathers already loved it: it is known that George Washington spent $200 on the cold delicacy in just one summer - a considerable amount of money for the second half of the 18th century. And in 1786, he even bought a large hand-cranked ice cream maker (from that time on, one would think, his servants were not idle in the summer). The author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, was not far behind. He was a big fan of vanilla ice cream, and in 1791, complaining about the shortage of vanilla in the newborn United States, he asked his envoy in France to send "at least fifty pods".
But there is no shortage of sweet-toothed people in history. The US contribution is not in individual figures, but in technology. The young state, literally obsessed with industrial progress and equality, radically changed the idea of ice cream as an aristocratic treat.
It all started in 1843, when a certain Nancy Johnson invented a mechanical ice cream maker - the time and labor required to produce the cold dessert were reduced manyfold. Soon, ice cream factories of quite industrial scale began to open across the country, and it began to be sold from street stalls and carts. It was also sold in pharmacies, which in the US traditionally served as small cafes.
In America, a third variety of the dessert appeared - the most popular now, if only because it is produced and sold by all major international labels. This is the so-called Philadelphia ice cream, the very same ice cream - it is fattier and denser than Italian gelato, but unlike classic French, it is made without egg yolks. Americans invented the sundae (simply put, ice cream with syrup) and bricks, waffle cones, and fruit ice. Even the characteristic ice cream spoon was patented in the US in 1897.
Europe contests the New World's primacy on only one point: the Eskimo pie. The author of ice cream covered in chocolate glaze and placed on a stick is considered to be the Frenchman Charles Gervais. And the name itself appeared by pure chance: in the early '30s, in one of the Paris cinemas where the sweet products of the Gervais company were sold, a film about the Arctic was shown for two weeks straight. One witty viewer, after watching the film, suggested calling Gervais' invention an "Eskimo pie". Later the name was shortened to "Eskimo", and since then the whole world has called glazed ice cream on a stick that way. In a purely French manner, without pronouncing the final consonant "s".
And what's more, the brilliant idea came to Gervais after a trip to the States. And indeed, the Americans themselves are sure that the Eskimo pie was invented not by some Frenchman, but by a native of Iowa, Chris Nelson. In general, it is no surprise that in 1921, the commissioner of Ellis Island, to whose piers immigrant ships docked, decided to treat all newcomers to ice cream - so they could taste the "truly American flavor".
No arguing about tastes?
Currently, the US sells nearly $20 billion worth of ice cream annually, and 94% of households consume it regularly. The average American eats more ice cream than anyone else in the world - 21.3 liters per year. And annual production in the States is about 21.8 liters per capita. The remaining half a liter, multiplied by the impressive total population, goes to export.
First of all, to Japan. Before coming into contact with Western civilization, the Land of the Rising Sun had not the slightest idea about ice cream. But now the Japanese are among its most ardent fans: aisu-kurimu, or simply aisu, is wildly popular in the Far East.
But the Japanese would probably not be Japanese if they had not modified the red-haired people's treat to suit their own tastes. And these tastes, it must be said, are quite specific. Otherwise, how to explain the appearance on the Japanese market of such delicacies as shrimp, crab, simply fish, and sea eel ice cream, or cactus ice cream?
Moreover, it seems that the Japanese have guessed a certain worldwide trend: mochi ice cream prepared in the Far Eastern style (that is, wrapped in a rice cake, which is actually called mochi), starting from California, is slowly conquering the rest of the states. Although Americans themselves have something to be proud of. So, New Yorkers can quite indulge themselves with ice cream flavored with ketchup or potato chips. In the Californian town of Gilroy, a Garlic Festival takes place annually, one of the gastronomic hits of which is garlic ice cream. I have come across mentions of avocado, tomato, pumpkin, corn ice cream - up to varieties like "Earl Grey" and "Guinness"!