Exactly where and how ice cream got its start is unclear. The Arabs were the first to develop a kind of fruit ice, but the Chinese seem to have invented milk-based ice, which Marco Polo described on his return from the Orient. Nero is supposed to have served cream frozen in snow at Roman banquets.
Some historians say Catherine de' Medici, a Florentine who married Henry II of France in the mid-1500s, introduced a variety of iced desserts (frozen thanks to icehouses, which were storage spaces, sometimes crude pits, for ice that was harvested). Bernardo Buontalenti was one of the 50 Italian chefs she brought with her, and he is credited with the invention.
In the 1660s, a Sicilian opened a café in Paris specializing in sherbets. They soon became the rage and, in due course, ice creams followed. Soon, there were about 250 shops and restaurants in Paris that were officially licensed to make and sell ice cream and water ices. Thomas Jefferson brought the recipe for ice cream to the U.S., when he returned home after serving as the first ambassador to France. Governor Francis Fauquier of Virginia wrote his brother that, in July 1758, a hailstorm provided a supply of ice that he used to cool wine and freeze cream. The Philadelphians claim it was introduced to their city in July 1782, served at a party given by the French envoy, with General George Washington in attendance. Washington became hooked and soon began making ice cream himself. In May 1784, his diary recorded that he spent 1 pound, 13 shillings and 4 pence on a "cream machine for ice."
In 1846, an American named Nancy Johnson invented the hand-cranked freezer that is still used in many homes today. Her sketch, which was patented two years later by William G. Young, employed a simple and steady mechanical action to keep the mixture moving, cooling it evenly, preventing the growth of large ice crystals and incorporating some air. The second historic advance for the frozen treat came in 1851, when Jacob Fussel, a Baltimore milk dealer, decided to use up all his surplus milk by freezing it into ice cream, hence becoming the first large-scale manufacturer.
From The Food Encyclopedia by Jacques Rolland and Carol Sherman
