We're on to another show and if you haven't heard our most recent shows,

the last one we did was on sourdough and the one before that was all about Maybe

the word is the wrong, but the capers, zucchini, that solved a crime, but.

Today we are onto ice cream.

You scream, we all scream for ding, ding, ding ice cream.

How you ready?

You ready?

Sylvia?

stuff, right?

Mm-hmm.

Yum.

I'm ready to, to dig in and scoop out of the bucket.

Yeah, let's go.

Hey, you know what?

The history of ice cream is fascinating, and it's the history

of America through the lens of food.

That's what we're all about, right?

I mean, it just tells a story and each of us has a story.

One of mine is my dogs get ice cream on their birthdays every year.

Doggy ice cream or

Just regular.

Take 'em to Baskin Robbins or something like that.

Give them a cone and they just love it.

Now, sad.

Part of the story is heart.

My beloved golden doodle that died, we didn't get his ice cream for him because

we were waiting for it to be the heart of summer because he is born in January

and that's not ice cream time, right?

But anyway, we missed that window, so don't wait.

Get your dog some ice cream today.

Yeah.

And so people who don't know us behind the scenes, we do wanna share a little story

so that you know a little bit about us.

But we did the dog show episode, I think it was about three episodes

ago, that was a lot of fun.

But, like a week after that, you lost Hart, who was six years old and tragically

passed, and literally a week later

You lost yours!

We lost Otis of Reding,

I mean, really, and that it's like it's a member of the family.

I know, and his birthday is on, well, it was on on July 15th,

so we're coming up on that.

So anyway, that's just a little bit behind the scenes of, of who we are and,

not that we're trying to be sad or, or

It's just life though.

I

but

unfortunately, that's, it's not within our, reach to know why, so

we, just,

We thought it would help you to know.

Right.

But it's who we

We love those

memories.

The doggy food stories.

We love that one.

We still do,

Oh, it was so good.

Anyway.

On to happier times with

ice cream

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

So the history of ice cream,

Hey, we could do a quiz too, and at the end we'll give the

answer I was obsessed with finding the answer to this because I love Dairy Queen.

Get those wonderful cones with the soft ice cream, chocolate

covered top, you know, the dipped

cone

you, Yeah.

Yeah.

That's Carvellllll by

us.

and the big giant rumor went through the mill and everybody kind of absorbed

it is that it isn't real ice cream.

Okay.

You get the answer at the end.

Is Dairy Queen ice cream really ice cream?

Stay tuned.

But so ice cream started, really wasn't an American treat to begin with.

I think it was French, wasn't it?

Oh yeah.

No, it started ancient pharaohs out of Egypt.

So much happened in Egypt, the birthplace of civilization, right.

And ice cream.

and I, found this a little interesting, and one of the, like

one of the pharaohs, I always think of Egypt as not having snow.

So I'm not quite sure how this Spend, but snow cream and if you haven't had

snow cream in your childhood, I have.

The shaved ice

No, that's snow.

Literally snow on the ground.

You go out and you scoop it up and you add in milk and

sugar and you create snow cream

Milk and sugar.

I've never heard of that.

I have heard of syrup.

you put like maple syrup , on the snow.

Snow cream I remember it was at the height when I was a kid.

It was the height of the nuclear fears and stuff, radiation and I, I didn't care.

I was a kid.

No I ate I ate as a

probably a lot more in our guts and radiation with the snow, right?

Anyway, so they mixed it with grape juice.

but it's been with us since ancient times and people created, and then refrigeration

came along, and that was a game changer.

and the wealthy had ice boxes, right?

So they could have it.

And you know, George Washington that, wild man, he spent $200 on ice

cream in 1790 and it's on a ledger a merchant's ledger that he paid.

I'm like, no, we don't know what he did.

You know,

back

why his teeth were bad, right?

$200 in that era.

$200 in that time, 1790.

Whoa.

Uh, anyway, but you had a story that it even came earlier than that in 1744.

Yeah.

Yeah, in 1744, ice cream arrived in the United States And when a

guest of Maryland Governor Thomas.

Baldwin wrote about tasting this at a dinner party, but in the late 17

hundreds is when it actually became a L luxury because it was so difficult

to get ahold of, predominantly because of the whole ice and keeping it cold.

But, I have to say, as it comes to ice cream in George

spending $200, I have spent.

A lot of money

Oh and ice cream

at times.

Right When, especially the special ice cream at the special ice cream

shops up north in Connecticut.

There was, Dr. Mike's High butterfat.

Oh my God.

That stuff would so good.

But I couldn't eat it without having a big glass of water afterwards.

What was it called?

It was called Dr. Mike's.

Dr. Mike's is quite famous up in Bethel,

Connecticut.

Yep.

And then down here we have Papa clyde's.

Papa Clyde's.

What a quaint name

Yeah.

Also very good.

But I think Dr. Mike's was a little bit better.

Hmm.

Tillamook, you know what?

Talking about brands, Tillamook was never anything that we had up north.

We have discovered Tillamook is pretty darn good, I would say as

good as the homemade Papa Clyde's.

So we are kind of ice cream

aficionados

here.

Well, I always get briers ' cause you can get the kind that has just sugar

milk or cream and eggs I think are in it.

and then the, whatever, the chocolate or whatever, the flavorings,

that's what, what Telamook is.

Yeah.

Yeah, so I try to, I try to gravitate to that, but it sort of reminds me

a little bit of the , Ben and Jerry's up North Vermont and then Oregon.

And I think a lot of times those two places are a lot alike sort of,

minds that are independent kind of contrarians, you know, I don't know.

That's a stereotype that I have about you.

Keep it weird is what they say.

North you, north Easterners, you know, I mean,

you're, i'm a Southerner.

The northeast we had rebels, but, we'll, get to that one about rebel ice cream.

Hey Jefferson.

Oh, Jefferson.

He was a wild man.

He collected recipes and was quite a connoisseur of fine dining

and all of that, and he had an 18 step recipe for ice cream.

And they said it.

Tasted like baked Alaska.

oh.

and so he he bought like ice molds, freezers, and all kinds of things that

would serve his guests, I assume with

fancy ice cream.

Have you ever tried to mold ice cream?

Never.

You don't bake it, you don't do anything anyway, sorry.

I do the easy stuff.

I'm a connoisseur of the grocery aisles.

I.

Yeah, so I'm an experimenter.

You know, the kitchen, is my science experiment and I have tried, but the

hard part is, I don't know whether you grease the inside or what you get.

There are these thick write the molds.

You get an antique mold.

My mom used to collect strange, like things like that for me and, give them

to me as birthday gifts or but, I was never able to get the ice cream to come

out where it didn't stick to the mold.

So.

What would be the point of that?

mean, cause

you could scoop the ice cream out of a cardboard

come on Sylvia.

If you're entertaining, you wanna do something fancy or pretty, or you do

an ice cream mold that looks like, let's say a giant sheep at Easter

time and you want to, you know, put

cool.

on it and decorate it and make it

like a Baskin cream cream cake.

Yeah.

But

Right.

Right?

Yeah.

The one that looks Baskin Robbins.

I saw one that looked like a Turkey cooked Turkey one year.

I was like, that's crazy.

I'm not gonna eat ice cream.

That looks like a Turkey, maybe a sheep, but not a Turkey.

Anyway, but moving forward, the chatter going on 1813 was Dolly Madison.

I always thought Dolly Madison bought ice cream to the White House, but it wasn't.

It was thomas

Jefferson

it famous, Right.

famous, Right.

Right.

she trended it.

somebody by the name of Dolly?

Honestly, really?

Yeah, Dolly.

Hmm.

We had a dog named dolly, so.

Uh, so she was what you call an early dessert influencer.

Ah, it happens.

so until the beginning of the 19th century, it was really

a province of the elite.

And then came, the game changer, right?

Insulated ice houses were invented in by the late 19th century.

This is fun.

American soda shops gained popularity and the soda jerks, soda

jerks.

The.

I wonder why they call them jerks because they weren't stupid, they weren't jerks.

They were, I don't know, what was

the whole thing with a jerking?

you know, that's a good question.

but I think jerks, maybe he has a colloquialism kind of thing,

is just people who do things.

It, it'd be interesting,

they do something like with the, the, levers or something?

Anyway, but Did you know that Thomas Jefferson actually had an

ice house built on the White House ground so that he could keep it?

So

that

was pretty

Yeah.

I thought that was

interesting.

Here's another interesting thing.

By the late 19th century, the Sunday.

Was, you ever wondered why a Sunday is called a Sunday?

it was S-U-N-D-A-Y, but has been changed now to S-U-N-D-A-E so that it's

distinguishable from the day Sunday.

But it was invented when soda began to be banned and the soda shops, ' cause

that was a, a genre of ice cream.

Was the soda

Right, the ice cream soda.

Mm-hmm.

And it was banned.

Soda was banned under blue laws.

For being seriously too much fun.

was about to say, who would ban soda?

It was too much fun.

I mean, yeah.

So they took out the carbonation, and at the same time, the 1904 St. Louis

World's Fair, the Cone was invented.

They did all these kind of things to try to get around, , this idea

that something was too much fun.

It makes no sense.

Okay.

A lot of this stuff makes no sense.

but the sundae was invented again as a way to get around having too much fun.

You could have a sundae, which is typically, sauce and nuts and,

ice cream and stuff like that.

so

Oh, too much fun.

Well, I, first of all, first of all,

I don't like

I can't imagine people wanting to ban fun.

Especially around ice

cream and food.

I know.

what part is stupid?

Did we not get in early?

Well, in the 19th century, this is not a political statement, it

is just like plain old stupidity,

Yeah, I know.

I mean it, I tell you what would frighten people to death, is looking

at the old laws that were on the books then about women in particular.

So.

don't, scare me

I know.

I mean, it's really scary what's actually still on some books.

They just don't enforce it.

I mean, we, talk about Arab countries in suppression of women.

Well, there was a lot of that going on and a lot on the

books.

So,

pantaloons in a bind.

bind.

Nancy Johnson came to the rescue in She invented the precursor of the homemade

crank ice cream big deal ice cream has to have, you know, cranks and all this stuff.

And she put in Yeah.

and she invented the very precursor of all of that.

So they still keep going, but there are very popular recipes

to make no cream ice cream,

but they say it tastes

you know, that's, the way to keep the kids quiet right in the summertime.

Just Keep, 'em cranking.

So, We're gonna take a quick little break and then we're gonna crank

it back up again when we get back.

Stay tuned.

So let's get this ice cream cranking again.

Sylvia.

Rock salt buckets.

Have you ever made it

that way?

I've never made it.

I y

it.

you know I have to come.

to Kentucky and teach you a thing or two.

Oh, hey.

Before we leave the history though, I wanna say early American flavors

were not what we have today.

Today.

It's sweet.

Right?

Although they're now adding bacon and they're infusing it with, liquor.

So you can go in and get a liquor infused ice cream, so

Like rum raisin.

Yep.

yeah, yeah, yeah, So Parmesan oyster asparagus.

can you imagine?

Oh, that sounds awful.

, anyway,

blue cheese.

I saw blue cheese in like

yeah, yeah, yeah.

yeah.

No, flame and hot Cheetos.

that's just totally sacrilegious.

anyway,

Hey, you found an interesting story about Fidel Castro.

I hope there are people out there who remember Fidel

castro, the dictator of Cuba.

yeah, if, if you don't Go google it.

Right.

Yeah.

Anyway, so Fidel Castro had an ice cream obsession, and after the US embargo

we actually cut off their dairy supply you can't make ice cream without.

Milk, right?

Milk and cream.

So he, created , Coppeli a I guess it is.

Anyway, it was a massive ice cream parlor that he made in Havana,

and it served thousands daily and stand out as a symbol of.

Culinary or culinary, depending upon how you pronounce it, right?

It's tomato versus tomato.

It's culinary versus culinary.

That's probably Martha versus, Julia,

But it was Cuba's defiance over the U.S.

where they got their dairy.

I guess they got it from other countries or something.

Who knows

I don't know.

they stole a cow.

But anyway, he was known for his eating as much as 18 scoops in one sitting.

it's amazing.

I don't know how tall this man was, but he must have had some

ugh.

Hey.

in one sitting.

He never looked that fat, so I don't get that.

Anyway,

I.

myth.

and wait a second.

You know, the CIA actually tried to poison him once with chocolate ice cream.

I love that.

I

Maybe the milk of the ice cream was the antidote that they

didn't expect to actually work.

Yeah.

know, cream solves a lot of things.

coach's stomach does all

sorts of good stuff

ask you what you like best.

Do you like soft serve or hard ice cream better?

Oh, I prefer the hard ice cream.

Soft actually, well wait a second.

So there was a Carvel ice cream at the base of the hill from, I grew up in

Glen Head, and we'd go down where the, the baseball and softball fields were.

And there was a Carvel ice cream.

. I can see it today.

With a slanted roof and everything Tom Carvel, but I'll tell

you about Tom Carvel later.

But it was the strawberry bonnet and the chocolate bottom ice creams that were

soft serve with the hard chocolate.

You know, the shells, the strawberry shells on the top and you bite

the top and it always oozed out.

It was on a hot day and Sooner rather than later.

Once you got and ate all that chocolate shell on the outside and you kind of

lick really fast to get the ice cream to stop melting, inevitably it was leaking

through the bottom of the cone, right?

Because it wasn't a sugar cone, it was one of those, crispy cones you had

to like suck it through the bottom.

And of course it ended up everywhere.

But, yeah.

So let me tell, can I tell you a little bit about Tom Carvel?

Please.

Tom Carvel known for the worst commercials on television and radio ever.

It's kind of like, if you haven't heard it in years back, oil heat's a dinosaur.

but anyway, that was also another one but the commercials were so

bad They were amazingly productive for the Carvel ice cream shop.

They were so bad that people remember them fudgy.

The whale, if anybody remembers fudgy the whale was the first cake ever

made for Father's Day, ever character.

And you've got the little chocolate crumbs in the middle, so that's important.

Also, ice cream store ever franchised, which I thought was rather interesting

So you

like that crunchies?

Yeah.

You

I like those little crunchies

I actually love the frosting that they have in those Carve; cakes.

I don't know what, there's something about them that are really,

they still out there?

Oh yeah, they're still out there.

They, you, I think Baskin Robbins had bought them and now I think Baskin

Robbins has divested themselves.

Let's, let's do a field trip.

We should do a field trip.

But, for years, I asked for the Carve; ice cream cake for my birthday and Bob

said, what do you want for your birthday?

I want a Carvel Never

ah,

it.

And one day he got it.

I said, well, it's about time.

I think I've been asking for 10

years.

I did that with chuck E. Cheese.

Ice cream cakes and they don't sell 'em anymore, but,

a

oh well you don't need Chuck E Cheese

Cheese.

Okay.

this is the basic difference I think, and I'm not sciencey enough to know.

soft surf and hard.

both have milk, sugar cream, higher air and served at a

warmer temperature is soft serve.

That kind of makes sense.

And it melts faster, so Right.

yeah.

Talk about my Dairy Queen obsession, but milk, sugar, cream

and air and, lower air content.

it has lower air

content.

no, it has higher, it has higher and hard, has lower.

And so it's kind of interesting.

And then you have gelato.

Which is Italian in origin.

It churned more slowly, less air mix, denser, but richer in taste.

Served at a warmer Temperature, thus creamy.

And then there's sorbet, which originated in the Middle East.

dairy free, totally made with fruit,

realize that it was started in Middle East.

That's kind of interesting.

Right.

Isn't that weird?

it counterintuitive, sorbet with dairy is sherbert.

Oh, that, well, that makes a lot of sense.

But you know what's so great is like the orange

and vanilla, it's like a creamsicle

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh Yeah.

Oh Yeah.

But turning is important and, we must thank Nancy Johnson.

Over and over, women entrepreneurs did not get the kind of, attention

they needed, but, you made ice cream and girl scout camp.

You just had such a nice, I wanna go back to

Girl Scout camp.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We they were big sort of wood barrels.

I mean, when you're a small kid, everything's big, right?

Till you become an adult and it's like, how, how come that's so small?

But anyway, my trip one year as an adult back to FAO Schwartz

Schwartz, and finding, how come this place looks so small?

Well, duh.

You know, I'm not 10.

but anyway, so the wood barrel, and then in the wood barrel you

have a, a metal container with the turning thing on the top, then.

around the insert, the metal insert between the metal insert

and the wood barrow is rock salt.

Lots in rock salt.

And so I don't know how the rock salt actually makes it cold,

but it does.

So it's weird.

it's weird.

science,

right?

We have to get, bill Nye, the science guy.

We need to bring him here to talk about ice cream, but

Oh, I love bill NI love that

Or beaker.

You know,

I, or one of us will have to go back to school and get a

degree in science or something.

Hey, um, big brands

Mm-hmm.

Ben and Jerry's

Yeah.

still ranks at the top now.

It's been sold.

It's owned by Unilever, but Unilever is trying to get rid of it, I think down too.

I know this is cool.

As an entrepreneurial effort, they started this business.

They took an online course in ice cream making for five bucks and invested

$12,000 in a new business in 1978.

And, you know, it's one of those things where.

You hook onto the moment and it trends and it's not always happening that way, but

so Ben unable to smell due to a disease called Anosmia used taste to invent the

Choking.

c and chunky mix-ins are like things that are crumbled up and put

inside the ice cream as like Oreo cookies and and all that chunky monkey.

Chocolate and chocolate chip cookie dough became very popular.

Chunky monkey has banana in it.

I didn't know that.

I've never had a chunky monkey.

Yeah, yeah.

But they were activists and there's some allegations that Unilever

didn't like that, so we don't know.

but it does show the danger of companies getting involved in politics.

Although I don't think Ben and Jerry cared about it that much.

They

Well, well wait a second.

Ben and Jerry's, I mean, these are two characters

from Vermont and I think a lot of activists in general.

You know, they we're in the backwoods, we're in tie dye and he's got a little

too much hair on his face and everything

else,

so.

Probably a nose ring.

Well, well, I don't think he had a nose back then, but I think that, uh, this

is my personal opinion, that it is the privilege of an entrepreneur to be able to

speak their voice and state their opinion.

And if that's what they wanna do, they can do it.

And they did it through their product.

It's such a beautiful way that created stories around everything.

I mean, we're back to the storytelling, right?

yeah.

ice cream wasn't that different.

It was how they branded them, and I thought that was

brilliance.

Right.

Okay.

Although I will say if you get involved in politics with your company, it's

totally, I, I agree totally with

you, but you accept, I have, we backed a mayor once at our restaurant that

didn't win, and we've been really shut out by the current mayor.

It just happens if you're willing to accept the consequences.

Go for it.

Because that's what they believe so deeply and I can go with that.

I'm fine.

And they invent one called Justice

yeah.

Save our Swirl

Yeah.

Save our swirl.

but.

I mean, You gotta

I think it's fun.

they, they make it lighthearted, yet they draw attention to things.

So

do

think it's, it's sweet rebellion, we'll call it.

Right?

you gotta accept the consequences.

And they're fine with that.

I mean, that's, what they do.

So, but other popular brands are like Haagen-Dazs.

I love this.

Invented by a Polish immigrant in New York City, and he it this because it

sounded Scandinavian and thus upscale

than polish,

And his wife would dress up like she was a sophisticated, she would dress

up and not be an ordinary person.

She would be like, Scandinavian.

And that's, I love that.

I love that.

Yeah.

Breyers and till ook, till Tillamook

Tillamook, yes.

Tillamook,

a cooperative that's so Oregon.

Yeah.

A cooperative and blue bunny named in a contest where a man's son called it

blue bunny figure in a store window.

And now we gotta talk about good humor, ice cream trucks.

Yes.

Yes, Turkey and the straw.

This is an important thing.

It's an American phenomenon, and I loved it when I was in Duluth, Minnesota, the

kids would hear the ice cream truck.

It comes every

Monday.

You could hear the ding.

Ding, ding, ding, ding.

And they would thus line up if you wanted anything to get kids

lined up and out of mischief.

Rent an ice cream truck, right?

Because then they anticipate, and you start hearing the ring probably 45

minutes before it actually arrives,

kids have more energy than if they were sucking on a whole VA of sugar

before that ice cream truck comes.

Right?

Mm-hmm.

I have a good humor story.

So, one year in college, in the summertime, you're

always looking for jobs.

During the summertime in college, I decided I was going to become.

good humor truck driver.

I love that

And so I did my research yeah, I could, I could do it again.

So I did my research.

Now this was up in Massachusetts, the neighborhoods were not like they

were in, we were out in a more rural environment and we lived on seven

acres and neighbors had like 10 or 12.

And so there was a lot of space between houses.

But I figured, okay, so I'll rent the truck.

you actually have to rent the truck.

then you have to pay in advance for all the good humor product

that's going into that truck.

Then you have to pay for your right.

You have to pay for your inventory, you have to pay for your uniform.

You have to pay for your gas, you have to pay for your insurance.

Now, your outlay is quite significant before you even get started, and

if you don't have the right route.

You

are sunk.

Talk about melted ice cream.

So, I decided the, the amount of investment.

Now you could do very well If you found the

route, but it, but it was a, a hit or miss thing.

And so in order to get right route, was gonna have to go further out on

the cape and I didn't know that area.

So it was probably gonna be, I would say at the time.

Mm-hmm.

I'm gonna say probably about a $3,000 investment of $3,000.

I didn't

have

just to get started,

Sure.

and you had to wear the white uniform with the little cop hat that

kind of looked like with a good, anyway, so I did not become a good

humor truck driver that

summer,

but it was

Oh, fate.

Yeah.

fate.

yeah, let's see here.

just interesting a truck guy.

Bought a fleet and created the ice cream bar that is sold.

Health regulations have really impacted on humor trucks now

they largely sell prepackaged

they were all prepackaged when we were kids.

Yeah, they're all in the paper

Really well.

and so But they have their famous things, the pushups, the

cream sickles, rocket ship.

Th you know, they're probably those rocket ship things that are red, white, and blue.

They're probably selling tons of those

today.

But, and then, so that's the good humor story.

But I gotta say too, just some quirky stuff.

Soft serve was discovered by accident when an ice cream truck had a flat and the guy

started selling the melting ice cream.

People liked it for its creaminess.

born out of necessity.

And then a famous kind of ice cream is Rocky Road, marshmallow and

Nuts, and it was invented to make people smile during the depression,

and it was a collaboration between Breyers, a famous ice cream and Edy's

I didn't realize it was that old that flavor.

That's interesting.

then, and then there's big gay ice cream, and I don't, I don't

even know about that.

I don't know where it is now.

Yeah, I never heard about that.

but there's one that was freeze, freeze dried for astronauts and they wouldn't

eat it, so it wasn't all that good.

Hey, and finally, uh, milkshakes in the 18 hundreds consisted of

whiskey, eggs, and ice cream.

that's my kind of ice cream.

I

I know but the infusion of alcohol is actually being introduced.

So, and that's happening again and

Hey, let's answer the question to your quiz.

Yeah, yeah, Okay.

So drum roll.

Drum roll.

What I thought, because this is how myths happen, I thought that meant it

had a bunch of additives and it might still, because the ice creams, do you

have to look at the ingredient list?

but what I had always heard is that it wasn't real ice cream.

Well, it's not, but you know why ice cream is regulated and has to be 10% milk fat.

Dairy queen, soft serve is 5%.

That's why they call it soft serve.

I thought, oh, I'm going back to Dairy Queen now.

I won't eat that rich Bryer's

I'll delete the rich Brier stuff and pop lights.

love my

Yeah.

Dipped.

The Dipped.

Yeah.

Well, on that note, I'm gonna send you off to Dairy Queen to go get your ice cream.

And, I'm gonna go back to Tillamook and Papa Clydes And while we're doing that,

please like, share, subscribe, review, do whatever you want, actually do whatever

we'd like you to wanna do, actually.

But anyway, we don't wanna like coercion here, we

really would appreciate your reviews and we hope that you enjoy the show,

And share your stories with us.

We have a lot more stories coming up and a lot more fun on future shows.

So thanks.

And don't forget, every meal has a story and every story is a feast.

We'll see you soon and we'll hear you soon.

Bye-bye