Monday, October 7, 2013

Ice Cream Through The Ages

By Marquerite Velasquez


If you love ice cream, you are not alone. Billions of people around the world love this sweet treat, which has been around since ancient times. The early version of ice cream is quite different from what we eat today, but we do known that Chinese cooks created desserts sweetened with fruits and consisting of rice and frozen milk as far back as perhaps 200 BC. In Ancient Rome, fruit was used to sweeten frozen milk, and early Arabs combined frozen milk and sugar for a dessert, the known instance of using sugar to sweeten instead of fruit.

Recipes for the creamy concoction we enjoy today appeared in cookbooks during the early 1700s in both the American Colonies and in England. It is believed that the Quakers brought the first ice cream recipes to the Colonies, but whatever the source, by the time George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were on the scene, both presidents enjoyed this cool treat. First Lady Dolley Madison, a revered hostess, declared that ice cream should be served during President Madison's inauguration party. While presidents, statesmen and even regular Americans enjoyed ice cream, it was still a fairly rare treat simply because there was no refrigeration and ice was hard to come by for most Americans.

Once insulated ice houses were invented in the early 19th century, it became much easier to produce ice cream and a new industry was born. The first soda fountains began to pop up in the United States after the Civil War, serving up ice cream sodas and eventually ice cream sundaes, which were invented as a Sunday treat because some religious groups felt that it was too decadent to enjoy a rich ice cream soda on the Sabbath. In fact, a few cities actually prohibited ice cream sodas being sold on Sunday, so enterprising ice cream vendors came up with a way around these laws.

The popular cone was around during the 19th century, but its popularity really boomed after the 1904 Worlds' Fair, which occurred in St. Louis, Missouri. It was a hot day and the waffle vendor was having no luck selling his treat. An adjacent ice cream vendor, on the other hand, sold so much that he ran out of containers. The quick-thinking waffle chef rolled up a waffle and suggested a partnership. The crowd loved the result and the handy and tasty cone just became more and more popular over time. The ice cream soda, the sundae and the cone are just some of the earliest ice cream treats, and today there are hundreds of interesting confections to consider. Americans consume more than a billion gallons of ice cream every single year, no matter what type of form the treat takes.

Now that you've spent some time reading about ice cream, you probably want to find the best ice cream in your area and enjoy a cool ice cream treat. In Los Angeles, you will find the best ice cream options at YoKuMon, an ice cream shop in Culver City. The main attraction at YoKuMon is the ice cream sandwich, but these aren't just any ice cream sandwiches. These are culinary masterpieces that consist of gourmet ice cream pressed between two homemade cookies.

The cookies are a gourmet treat by themselves, and all of them are baked fresh right at YoKuMon. In fact, the staff bakes new batches throughout the day. There are eight cookie varieties and a dozen flavors of ice cream which you can mix and match to suit your tastes. No matter what flavors you choose, the ice cream sandwiches are just $2, so this is not only a delicious treat, it's also quite affordable. In addition to these cookie ice cream sandwiches, you can just order an ice cream cone, a cookie or perhaps opt for sorbet, shaved ice, a milk shake or perhaps a decadent waffle ice cream sandwich topped with chocolate sauce or caramel sauce.




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