A Short History of Ice Cream

Any history of ice cream will be incomplete, because it's so old and hard to define. The Chinese ate a frozen snack made of milk and rice that had been frozen in the snow about 200 BCE. During the Tang Dynasty, the earliest known flavored ice cream was made with flour, water buffalo milk, and camphor (yum!). Centuries later, the Persians were the first to add sugar to frozen treats. But in the summer or in the tropics, frozen desserts were restricted to the rich, as ice had to be transported from far away.

Ice cream really took off when flavorings from the Americas became available: chocolate, vanilla, and molasses. A revolution came when Augustus Jackson, a free Black man who worked as a chef at the White House between 1817 and 1837, developed a method of making ice cream by adding salt to ice in order to freeze the cream. He didn't patent the ice cream maker, but it made homemade ice cream possible. Read about the evolution of ice cream from snow to Rocky Road at Readers Digest.

See also: The history of the ice cream cone, the ice cream truck, and popsicles.

(Image credit: Peachyeung316)