To observe National Chocolate Ice Cream Day on June 7th all you need is chocolate ice cream. Who says you have to stop there, though? You can have it in a cone or make it from scratch. Add sprinkles or syrup or whipped cream.
- Chocolate ice cream is the second most common flavor, surpassed only by vanilla.
- The chocolate-flavored ice cream has been in existence well over a hundred years and has been popular in the United States since the late 19th century.
- The earliest frozen chocolate recipes were published in Naples, Italy in 1693 in Antonio Latini‘s The Modern Steward.
- Chocolate was one of the first ice cream flavors, created before vanilla, as common drinks such as hot chocolate, coffee, and tea were the first food items to be turned into frozen desserts.
- Hot chocolate had become a popular drink in seventeenth-century Europe, alongside coffee and tea, and all three beverages were used to make frozen and unfrozen desserts. Latini produced two recipes for ices based on the drink, both of which contained only chocolate and sugar.
- In 1775, Italian doctor Filippo Baldini wrote a treatise entitled De sorbetti, in which he recommended chocolate ice cream as a remedy for various medical conditions, including gout and scurvy.
- Vanilla is considered the most popular flavor of ice cream, but ever since the Italians froze hot chocolate in 1692, chocolate has been a close contender.
- The US is the third-highest producer and consumer of the cold stuff in the world.
- Ice cream is a luxury – honest! Up until the late 1800s, ice cream was only for the rich and super-elite. This is due to the fact that they were the only ones who could afford to import it and then freeze it when it arrived.
- The origins of ice cream can be traced back to at least the 4th century B.C. Early references include the Roman emperor Nero (A.D. 37-68) who ordered ice to be brought from the mountains and combined with fruit toppings.
- King Tang (A.D. 618-97) of Shang, China had a method of creating ice and milk concoctions. Ice cream was likely brought from China back to Europe.
- Hawaii has an “ice cream bean” fruit that tastes like ice cream!
- The first commercial ice cream plant was established in Baltimore in 1851 by Jacob Fussell.
- The U.S. enjoys an average of 48 pints of ice cream per person, per year, more than any other country.
- In 2016, Americans ate 2.7 billion liters (713.2 Million Gallons) of ice cream.
- 90% of American households eat ice cream.
- Do you know how many licks it takes to consume a cone of ice cream? Researchers discovered the magic number is 50 licks.
- Chocolate is the most preferred ice cream topping. Chocolate sauce and chocolate ice cream.
- The most popular day to consume ice cream is Sunday!
- An average dairy cow can produce enough milk in her lifetime to make a little over 9,000 gallons of ice cream.
- In the U.S., all ice cream needs to have a minimum of 10% milkfat if it is to be labeled “ice cream”. This includes custard-based (French Style) ice creams.
- Ice cream became available to the general population in France in 1660.
- Ice cream was introduced to America in the 1700s, but mostly enjoyed by those of status and wealth.
- Americans celebrated the victory of WWII with ice cream. In 1946, they ate more than 20 quarts of ice cream per person.
- Italo Marchiony sold his homemade ice cream from a pushcart on Wall Street. He reduced his overhead caused by customers breaking or wandering off with his serving glasses by baking edible waffle cups with sloping sides and a flat bottom. He patented his idea in 1903.
- Ice cream cones were invented during the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis when large demand forced ice cream vendors to find help from nearby waffle vendors. Together they made history.
- Market analysts confirmed that ice cream sales increase many times during times of recession or war.
- Ice cream’s “Brain Freeze” effect is triggered when cold ice touches the roof of your mouth, which causes blood vessels in the head to dilate.
- When town leaders in Evanston, WY, made it illegal to sell ice cream sodas on Sundays, shop owners invented the ice cream sundae. They replaced the soda with syrup to get around the law, and they replaced the ‘y’ in Sunday with an ‘e’ in order to avoid offending religious leaders
- The first ice cream truck vendor in the United States was Harry Burt, who started his business in 1920.
- The popular phrase, “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream” comes from a song written by Howard Johnson, Billy Moll and Robert King in 1927.
- American President George Washington apparently loved ice cream so much that in the summer of 1790 alone he spent $200 on ice cream, around $5000 dollars by today’s standards.
- Chocolate ice cream became popular in the United States in the late nineteenth century. The first advertisement of ice cream in America started in New York on May 12, 1777, when Philip Lenzi announced that ice cream was officially available “almost every day”.
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