In 1671, King Charles I of England invited his friend to dinner. The meal was followed by new dish, the king’s French chef had concocted for the occasion. It was cold like snow but was much creamier and sweeter than any other dessert. The guests were delighted, and Charles called the cook and asked him not to disclose the recipe. The king wanted the delicacy to be served only at the Royal table and offered the cook 500 pounds a year to keep it that way.
Of course, it is likely that ice cream was not invented, but rather came to be perfected over years by similar efforts.
Indeed, the Roman Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar is said to have sent slaves to the mountains to bring snow and ice to cool and freeze fruit drinks he was so fond of. Centuries later, the Italian traveler Marco Polo returned from his famous journey to China with a recipe for making water ices resembling modern day sorbets. On his return, he instructed the dish to Italy. When Catherine de Medici of Italy married Duc d’ Orleans of France in 1533, she took with her, chefs prepare this magical dish.
In the United States, Betty Jackson, a black woman from Chaddsford, Pennsylvania, established a tea room in Wilmington, where she sold cakes, fruit, and desserts to wealthy people for their parties. Her daughter-in-law, Aunt Sallie Shadd, invented the ice cream. Dolly Madison, the wife of President James Madison, heard about the new desert, came to Wilmington to try it, and afterward made ice cream a highlight of dinners at the White House.
New Jersey a woman, Nancy Johnson, in 1846 invented the hand cranked freezer. This device is still familiar to many. By turning the freezer handle, they stirred up a container of ice cream mixture in a bed of salt and ice until the mixture was frozen. Although Nancy Johnson did not have her invention patented but similar type of freeze was patented on May 30, 1848, by a Mr. Young who called it the Johnson Patent ice cream freezer.
*Sorbets- (ice –lollies) ice made from fruit juice or sweetened water called `Chuski’ in North India.