GREAT INDUSTRY

Greymouth Evening Star, 22 March 1935, Page 10

GREAT INDUSTRY

CONQUERING ICE CREAM. In Britain alone —60,000 separate concerns sell ice creams, 600,000,000 ice-cream . wafers are manufactured each year, one machine can turn out 50,000 cones a day, and these figures are multiplied many times the ‘world over, says the “Christian Science Monitor.”

Yet this vast industry is in debt, it has been stated here, to the perspicacity of a certain Roman general. In about 300 8.C., Quintus Maximus Gurges, general and Latin cookerybook compiler, discovered that frozen creams and sugars made a very excellent last course for banquets, a fine cooler for hot days, and an enjoyable snack in cold weather. He had invented ice cream —according to information disclosed at the fifth annual Dairy and lee Cream Exhibition in London.

Tho general’s book of recipes has boon handed down to posterity. And it is found that except for using honey instead of sugar, and snow from mountain caverns instead of ice, the Quintus Maximus Special would probably have rivalled the best to-day. Other history of the ice creams was also revealed. Alexander the Great relished snow-cooled drinks. These were called “Macedonicae” in his honour. a term which still remains in use today. Caterina de Medici introduced ico cream from Italy to Franco, when she married Henry 11. in 1537. And it is said she was served with a different flavour every day. Marco Polo, that redoubtable thirteenth century Italian explorer, saw “frozen milk” sold in China.

But the modern ice-cream business seems a. far cry from Chinese frozen milk and Quintus Maximus. Although Britain has been far behind the United States in ice-cream manufacture in the past, the dairy exhibition was a definite indication that Britain is expanding rapidly. Every stall manager had some word to say on the astonishing increase of business. A sudden rush of orders to one carton manufacturer had meant the stoppage of further orders for four months. In the milk industry Britain is becoming more and more mechanised. A manager of the English section of an American machine firm declared that in milk-cleaning and purifying machinery Britain is far ahead of America.

The advent of one innovation will certainly be cheered by town dwellefs. That is tho coming of the silent milk cart. One of these—with pneumatic tires, non-rattling cardboard "bottles,” and pushed by a non-singing milkman —recently crept up and delivered milk to Lord Border, president of the AntiNoise League, without his being aware of its arrival.

The exhibition also gave another cheering innovation to the British public. It was revealed that next summer ices will be obtainable from slot machines at any time of the day or night . Britons are hoping for a hot summer.