Hi, I'm Dr. Annie Gray
and I'm here at Marshfield Farm near Bath
on behalf of English Heritage to talk about the history of ice cream.
What do you think about when I say ice cream?
Your favourite flavour in a tub or on a stick?
The jolly jingle of an ice cream van
or perhaps just long, hot summer days full of lovely things.
Well, ice cream is all of that, and more.
So to start with let's go back to where it all began.
Ice cream originated in Italy, where it was something of a table trick.
The magic of watching a creamy custard
turn into a frozen dessert before your very eyes.
It arrived in Britain in the early 17th century,
and you can track its progress through the building of ice houses.
The first ones were royal, in 1619 in Greenwich and then in Hampton Court
and by the 18th century,
ice houses could be found in any country house worth its salt.
Ice cream was very much for the rich.
Ice houses were really simple, they’re just a really big hole in the ground.
That hole in the ground would be filled with frozen ice from lakes
and from rivers taken out in the winters, which then were very, very cold.
Above that hole in the ground would be a small brick structure, a bit like an igloo
with two doors really tightly sealed in order to stop the hot air getting in.
Kept like that underground where it was really cold.
Ice would keep solid for several years.
Then it could just be taken out, wheeled off to the kitchen
and cut up into little pieces, ready to make ice cream.
Here at Marshfield Farm, ice cream is made under modern
hygienic conditions in a very small scale factory.
In the past, it was a little different, but very, very simple.
All you needed was a bucket, a freezing pail, also called a sorbetière
and a spaddle to stir your ice cream.
The process?
Well, what you did was you grab some ice
crushed it up
put it in the bucket and added loads and loads of salt.
You then put your freezing pail in the middle.
Like that.
The ice and salt created an exothermic reaction
which meant that the temperature got down to around -22, -25c,
quite a lot colder than the average modern freezer.
You’d put your mix in your freezing pail
and then you'd alternatively scrape and stir and spin.
It took around 45 minutes to make really beautiful, well churned ice cream.
The technique was so simple and so effective
that it lasted until the 1950s.
And sometimes you can still see pictures of itinerant street sellers
with wheelbarrows full of ice and salt
and this tell tale handle of a sorbetière just poking out of the top.
The earliest recipes for ice cream come from manuscript books
such as Lady Anne Fanshawe’s ‘Icy Cream’ in the 1670s.
By the 18th century,
you could buy printed books with lots of recipes inside them as well.
Artisan producers like Marshfield Farm have lots of flavours on offer
but it's nothing compared to the 18th century.
If you were choosing ice cream, then you might decide to go for tamarind
or bergamot, tea, coffee, rosemary
or one of my personal favourites
parmesan ice cream.
Ices were usually eaten as dessert after dinner
often molded in fancy molds like these.
But by the end of the century, you could also pop along
to your local confectioners shop and buy yourself a frozen pick-me-up.
There were three types of ice
cream-ice
water-ice
which today we'd call sorbet
and sorbetto, which generally involved alcohol.
By the Victorian period ices were not just for the rich.
Ice was being harvested from huge ice flows in North America
and stored in commercial ice houses in cities across Britain.
Meanwhile, Italian immigrants brought street ices to a grateful public.
These included things like Hokey Pokey, which came in bright colours
and the penny lick, which was a glass cone.
It would be given to you and you'd lick your ice cream out of it
and give it back to the seller,
who would rinse it in increasingly filthy water
before refilling it and giving it to the next customer.
Meanwhile, for the rich, the range of flavours
just kept on growing.
How about marmalade or melon, cranberry or cucumber
or even biscuit or white wine?
If any of these have you salivating, then furnish yourselves
with a copy of Agnes Marshall's Book of Ices.
Then came the 20th Century
Two World Wars, during which time it was
almost impossible to get hold of ice cream.
It was still popular though, and in the 1930s
Wall’s had a massive fleet of ‘Stop Me and Buy One’ tricycles
all of which were requisitioned during the Second World War.
This was also the period which saw the introduction of the wafer cone
and the ice lolly.
In the 1950s both our food production systems
and the way in which we made food became more industrialised and more standardised,
leading us inevitably to where we are today.
English Heritage have worked with Marshfield Farm
to develop a brown bread ice cream
to go into selected sites this summer.
It's the perfect melding of old and new.
1760s from when the first recipes come and the 2020s.
I'm lucky enough
to be one of the first people to try it.
And it's absolutely amazing.