The Romance Of Ice Cream

Northern Advocate, 2 December 1939, Page 11

The Romance Of Ice Cream

A NY time is ice-cream time, but the warm days of summer, which seem

10 be here already, despite welcome min, is the time par excellence for iced foods and drinks. ice-cream is made all the year round, and its manufacture provides employment iur quite a small army of workers, but there are probably lew of the makers, to, say nothing of the millions tnrougnout the world who enjoy the consumption of the delectable food, who give a thought to its evolution.

Observations By “The Man On <The Lookout"

TT is recalled that iced drinks, which include ice-cream in all its varieties —were actually—and accidentally —created as a trade in France 800 years ago by a greedy young daughter of a noble lord, of Provence. This worthy was only 13 when she married Gaspard do Venel, a young noble of Marseilles. Pie in his devotion would have done anything asked of to please his girl wife. * v npHE story goes that she one day—one of the hot days which are common in hot, sunny Provence —expressed a longing for ice or iced drinks. Her husband anxious to please her, found that, the only way by which it was possible to get ice in midsummer was to bring it more than 200 miles from high up in the Pyrenees. No sooner thought of than the young 1 noble had it done. };: * i]t IyTEN v/ere employed to travel back and forward between Marseilles and the mountains every day with a load of ice for the greedy young chatelaine. Wealthy families in the neighbourhood soon heard of this ; luxury, and offered to share the ex- j penses if they could have some of the ice. Gaspard, quickly aware of the money-making possibilities of such an arrangement, dispensed with the mes-

scugVio, ana installed a chain, of chariots to make the mountain trip—and in a few years, we are told, had built up a roaring trade.

*< •!» a A FEW years later, his wife, who x was at the Court of Versailles as governess to the Royal children, obtained for her lord the exclusive ice trade in Provence, granted by the King of France. Gaspard, who had become very wealthy, began creating depots all over the South of France. » # •(- HpODAY, with the discovery of refrigeration, the ice trade has become a great industry. No longer is it necessaiy to get ice from anywhere, let alone long distances, for there are in existence devices which have made man independent of the ice Helds. Gaspard do Venel deserves the thanks of Hie millions who today enjoy ice-cream and other iced concoctions, but there are no monuments to his memory. All that remains in any way associate! with him is a little street in the busy old port of Marseilles which is called the Rue de la Glace, named after one of Gaspard’s ice depots which he built there.

QTILL another pioneer to whom no k memorial is raised Is one Procipio Cultalli. a Sicilian chef, who introduced ice-cream •to the gourmets of Paris. Soon knowledge of this delicacy crossed the Channel to England, but it was far too expensive for any but the wealthy, and, although recipes

for preparing it appeared in such books .as "The Experienced HouseKeeper,'’ the dlmcuity and expense of securing ice prevented its becoming popular.

TN a sense, the original home of icecream is America, for in that country its consumption by the masses, rather than the classes, first came about chiefly because ice could be obtained more readily. Toe Great Lakes provided the ice during the winter, and this was stored for use during the heat waves of the eastern States. In due course, an export trade was built up, and the ice was shipped eventually to London and as far away as Calcutta.

A T one time ice was shipped to EugA *~’iand from Norway, after the Napoleonic wars, but this was used mostly for cooling drinks and preserving food, and no country mansion was without an ice house in its grounds where ice could remain unmelted for months on end. Even when ice-cream became less expensive to buy, and was gracing the tables of the middle classes and sometimes oaten by the poor, it did not actually become a delicacy for everybody.

TTS popularity ns an nil-day, everyday cheap sweetmeat is indirectly due to an enterprising young Italian refugee who. with his compatriots, poured into London during Austrian rule in Italy. He had been an icecream seller in his own country, and he started his business in his adopted land with one gaudily-painted barrow, which soon became an army of barrows with his own countrymen as salesmen. Like a one-time much advertised pen. ice-cream is indeed a boon and a blessing to people, who no doubt, wonder how other generations managed to do without it.