Try this riddle: What food of ancient kings became such a favorite of the American masses that it`s now touted as one of the original fast foods?
Some hints: Americans eat more of it than anybody else in the world. Counting its low-calorie derivatives, we consume 831 million gallons of the stuff-almost 23 quarts per person-every year.
Still stumped? It`s cold. It`s creamy. It comes in a dizzying array of flavors, even Sunflower Power and Fickle Pickle.
You got it. Ice cream: likely the only All-American treat and multi-billion-dollar industry that dates back to King Solomon.
Everybody eats ice cream. Well, almost everybody. At least 98 percent of us do, according to the International Ice Cream Association. George Bush loves the stuff. Richard Nixon had his favorite brand flown to Washington from California.
Adults older than 45 and children eat the most. The more money you earn, and the more education you have, the more you eat.
Where there are people . . .
After Americans, Finns consume the most ice cream. They`re followed by the Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians. You can find ice cream on tiny Caribbean islands (one parlor in Barbados offers an ice cream made from flying fish) and in Alaskan fishing villages. ”Anywhere there`s people, there`s ice cream,” said Bryan Soronson, a University of Maryland ad-
ministrator who has built a second career as an ice cream expert.
The Top 10
America`s favorite flavors, according to the ice cream association:
1. Vanilla
2. Chocolate
3. Butter pecan
4. Strawberry
5. Neapolitan
6. Chocolate chip
7. French vanilla
8. Cookies and cream
9. Vanilla fudge ripple
10. Praline pecan
Celery sorbet?
Happily, you don`t need a diploma from an institute of higher learning to make ice cream. You usually start with milk, cream, sugar and eggs. After that, you`re limited only by imagination and available ingredients. Soronson said he has tasted more than 700 kinds of ice cream, among them:
– Jalapeno pepper-vanilla ice cream with mild jalapeno peppers.
– Prickly pear-ice cream with pieces of cactus fruit.
– Sweet potato-ice cream with the flavor of sweet potato.
– Celery sorbet-pulverized celery, sugar and water.
– Breakfast ice cream-eggs, cereal and pieces of granola.
From kings to presidents
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King Solomon didn`t have such choices. The Bible suggests he liked simple things, such as iced drinks during harvest time, considered to be one of the first rungs in ice cream`s evolutionary ladder. In ancient Rome, Emperor Nero often sent runners into the mountains to get snow, which he flavored with honey, fruits and juices. The job presented a significant occupational hazard: If the snow was melted, Nero killed the runner.
In Italy, by the 16th Century, a recipe for sherbet that Marco Polo had brought back hundreds of years earlier evolved into ice cream. The Italian princess, Catherine de Medici, took it to the French court when she married Henry II in 1553. By the 17th Century, ice cream had crossed the English Channel: Charles I is reported to have eaten ”cream ice” regularly.
Even when ice cream arrived in the U.S. around 1700, it was reserved largely for the rich because it was difficult and costly to make and store. George Washington ate a lot of it. Thomas Jefferson had a favorite recipe for a concoction that resembled modern-day baked Alaska. And Dolley Madison created a sensation when she served strawberry ice cream for dessert at the inaugural banquet in 1812 of her husband, President James Madison.
Milking a good idea
Making ice cream available to a wider public took good old-fashioned American know-how: the invention in 1845 of the ice cream freezer by a New Jersey woman named Nancy Johnson. But she neglected to patent it, and others quickly copied her idea.
Within a few years, Jacob Fussell, a Baltimore milk dealer, figured out how to manufacture ice cream on a large scale. Not incidentally, it was a great way to use up the excess milk and cream at his dairy.
But it was, of all things, the late 19th Century temperance movement that helped secure ice cream`s place in our hearts. Henry Binford, a Northwestern University professor who specializes in American culture, explained that by the turn of the century, saloons were no longer accepted gathering places for the middle class. Ice cream parlors quickly took their place. ”They were the fastest-growing American institution of the late 19th Century,” Binford said. ”Every town had one, if not several.”
By the 1920s, Popsicles, Eskimo Pies and other novelties had come on the U.S. market. Good Humor trucks were starting to make their rounds. Ice cream had become such a part of life in the New World that the commissioner of Ellis Island made it part of the first meals for new immigrants.
Parlors still popular
Some of the Chicago area`s early ice cream parlors are still around. Gertie`s, now at 59th and Kedzie, has been a fixture on the South Side since 1901; Petersen`s opened its doors on Chicago Avenue in Oak Park in 1919; and in Wilmette, Homer`s on Green Bay Road followed a few years later.
And they`re as popular as ever. Despite concerns about cholesterol, and the availability of lower-fat frozen yogurt and lite ice-milk products, people seem to be eating plenty of old-fashioned ice cream, including sundaes and sodas, local owners say.
At Petersen`s in Oak Park, for example, the favorite is the Tortoise, featuring vanilla ice cream, caramel, chocolate sauce and pecans, for $3.95.
Gertie`s customers go bananas for splits. ”Sales are up at every one of our stores,” said John Yesuitis, owner of the nine-store Gertie`s Ice Cream Parlor and Lindy`s Chile Parlor chain. ”In the evenings, we`re always packed.”
Top toppings
Around the country, the most popular toppings:
1. Hot fudge
2. Chocolate fudge
3. Butterscotch
4. Caramel
5. Strawberry
David Lasky, president of Des Plaines-based Bresler`s Ice Cream, said you have to get to the bottom of the list before you hit anything remotely healthy like granola.
Sundaes for Sundays
We may thank the temperance movement for giving us ice cream sundaes, but no one can agree where the first sundae was made: Two Rivers, Wis., or Evanston.
The anti-liquor crowd, whose Woman`s Christian Temperance Union was headquartered in Evanston, opposed the sale of ice cream sodas on Sundays: it thought the fizzy water was sinful because it could be used to mask alcohol. Evanston even passed an ordinance in 1875 to ban the sale of ice cream sodas on Sunday.
But several enterprising individuals in the 1880s, among them Evanston druggist William Garwood, figured they would serve the soda syrup on top of the ice cream-without the soda water. They dubbed their concoction Sundays, later changed to sundaes so as to show no disrespect for the Christian Sabbath.
A new holder
First came ice cream. Then came the cone. Here`s how it happened: A man named Italo Marchiony first produced one in 1896 in New York City and even secured a patent. But cones didn`t hit it big until the 1904 St. Louis World`s Fair when an ice cream vendor ran out of dishes. Ernest Hamwi, a Syrian concessionaire nearby, quickly assessed the situation: He rolled his thin, waferlike waffles in the shape of cornucopias to hold the ice cream-and another industry was born.
Classics and clunkers
Today, ice cream-makers are constantly trying to come up with new flavors. Baskin-Robbins has more than 620 on its roster, with new ones appearing every year. Some, like Pralines n` Cream, become classics. Others, like Goody Goody Gumdrop and Sunflower Power, turn out to be clunkers.
Tastes in ice cream seems to have a lot to do with geography. Minnesotans love Bresler`s licorice. Easterners like coffee and rum raisin, while Southerners go for anything with nuts. Californians love chocolate, Baskin-Robbins reported. Chicagoans go for butter pecan and anything with milk chocolate, said Bresler`s Lasky.
Location also seems to determine how much ice cream you eat, according to the International Ice Cream Association. New Englanders eat close to 30 quarts each a year, while people on the West Coast eat only 24. The greatest ice cream fans live in the states of Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska and the Dakotas. They gobble up about about 38 quarts a year each.