Ice cream is a popular dessert. No doubt about that! It can be found everywhere, especially in the summer, whether at a 4th of July parade, the beach, or in your own backyard.
Some of our past posts have featured ice cream recipes. But what about other things related to ice cream? How about ice cream freezers or ice cream containers?
We all scream for ice cream! Without question, ice cream is one of the most popular treats in America, but do you know much about its history?
According to Laura B. Weiss, author of Ice Cream: A Global History, iced drinks can be traced back to at least the ancient Greeks and Romans. But many historians believe that the emperors of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) in China may have been the first to eat a frozen milk-like confection — made with fermented cow, goat or buffalo milk which had camphor added to make it flake like snow. Italians generally are credited with inventing ice cream as we know it today, popularizing a concoction of sugar, flavorings (often fruit like lemon or strawberry), and ice or snow sometime in the mid-seventeenth century. Ice cream was particularly favored by the French aristocracy in the 1800s, and Thomas Jefferson is said to have gained an appreciation for the treat while serving as US ambassador to France from 1784-1789.
In honor of the patriotic spirit of the Fourth of July, plus the gardening season that is upon us, we take a special look at victory gardens!
Though more known for their place in the Second World War, victory gardens (or war gardens as they were initially called) were first advocated during World War I. In addition to rationing other goods, citizens were urged to do their patriotic duty and grow their own vegetables, fruits and herbs at home in order to free up resources for the military. It was hoped that with more resources, the U.S. forces would have better success on the warfront.
The origin of curry, the saucy, spiced dish celebrated in India and Great Britain, is not exactly known. But it is now thought that similarly spiced dishes were developed concurrently, but independent of each other, in England and in India thanks to the spice routes that spanned from Asia and into Europe. Exotic spices like turmeric and pepper made their way into England during the conquests of the Romans in 40 AD and the Moors in 711 AD, and came in handy during Middle Ages when highly seasoned meats could make aging meat more palatable.
Did you know that January is National Soup Month? We didn’t either but it gave us a great topic for this month’s Cooking from the Collections feature! We whipped up more »
Welcome to Part II of December's Cooking from the Collections feature! This month, our intrepid recipe testers tried their hand at old fashioned sweets. The treats included Martha Washington’s recipe more »
Welcome to our monthly Cooking from the Collections feature! This month, our intrepid recipe testers tried their hand at old fashioned sweets. The treats included Martha Washington’s recipe for sugar more »
