Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1886-07-08
THE HISTORY OF ICE-CREAM.
First Discovered in Northern Pennsylvania.
Philadelphia News

! Philadelphia News
There is considerable difference between
the ice-cream of the present day and
that which has been eaten by the pilgrim
fathers, had they had any as the art of
making the cooling and refreshing dish
has made a surprising advancement since
hte early days of its manufacture. Ice
cream so the history of it goes, is not an
invention, but discovery, like many of
the best things which have fallen to the
use of man; and, strange to say. it was
discovered almost simultaneously with
the discovery of this great continent and
stranger still 1T was made by the Indian
women of one of the tribes in northern
Pennsylvania. The aborigines in that
part of the state used the milk of the COW
elk, they kept their milk in jugs hewn out
of stone. The milk frequently froze and
was generally thrown away as useless, but
one of the squaws took to eating it and
found 1T good, and she took to freezing
1t regularly, until her red-skinned lord
made vigorous kick on the extravaganza
of her using up all the milk, but every
time the buck went on hunting trip she
had her frozen milk, which was the real
predecessor of ice-cream, and many of
the squaws of her tribe followed her ex-
When sugar was brought among them the
Indians took to sweetening the frozen milk.
The white settlers took to the new dish.
and the avidity with which it was consum-
ed led to the regular establishment of it
among the trade.
The primitive method of making ice
cream by the confectioner of the revolu-
tlonary days was vastly different from
the way 1T is made now. First the sweet
ened milk was simply CONCEALED and then
broken up with a ladle. Then it was
found that cream alone made a better
dish, and also that an egg or two added
to its richness and body, and that if the
air was beaten into it the cream increased
nearly twice in quantity. The trade fell
entirely into the hands of the bakers and
confectloners, and the first work at which
the bakers apprentice was put in those
days was beating ice-cream with a wooden
paddle. The ice-cream season had no
pleasure for him, for he spent his days,
and frequently his nights, agitating the
frozen sweetness with his wooden paddle,
while MS companions with their girls,
helped to eat the fruit of his labors.
AS the demand for the delectable dish
increased the old paddle method was
found to be too slow, and machinery was
ueNlSeu by Wn1cn the Work could be done
by steam, water and horse power, and now
the beaters revolve within the closed can
while revolving blades cut the frozen
cream from the sides of the vessel.
The growth and development of the
trade has brought so much machinery in
to use that upon it depends vast number
of people for a LIVELIHOOD. Thousands
are engaged IN the making of the differ
ent appliances for its manufacture;
thousands more are employed exclusively
in the making of it, and thousands are
Indirectly supplied with work through it.
Even doctors and lawyers owe many a fee
to 1.-THE doctors earning theirs in pre-
scribing for collie brought on by overin-
diligence in it, and the lawyers getting, if
not earning, theirs by means of suits for
breach of promise made over the love-in
spring and seductive dish.