A Brief, Occasionally Embarrassing History of Ice Cream

Nobody knows exactly who invented ice cream, which is a travesty, because that person deserves a statue, a holiday, and possibly a Nobel Prize. What we do know is that humanity spent thousands of years eating gruel and staring at fire before someone — a true visionary, a hero among mortals — decided to combine sweetness, cream, and cold into something that made life worth living.

The Ancient World Gets Close, But Not Quite

Humans have been chasing the dream of cold sweet things for a very long time. Alexander the Great, who conquered most of the known world before age 32, reportedly enjoyed snow flavored with honey and nectar. The Roman Emperor Nero — a man better known for fiddling while cities burned — sent slaves sprinting to the mountains to fetch snow, which he then doused in fruit and juice. These men had armies and empires, and they used their power to invent a mediocre snow cone. Relatable, honestly.

In the Tang Dynasty of China, around 618–907 AD, Emperor Taizong kept 94 “ice men” on staff whose entire job was to haul ice for royal frozen desserts made with buffalo milk. Ninety-four people. Just for ice. The royal household was essentially a staffed freezer. Progress was being made, but it was outrageously inefficient progress.

The Renaissance: Europe Discovers It’s Been Missing Out

Somewhere in the 16th century, the concept of frozen desserts drifted into Europe, probably via trade routes from the Arab world, where chilled sherbets had been enjoyed for centuries. The Italians — who have never in history needed to be told twice about food — ran with the idea enthusiastically. Florentine chefs began experimenting with frozen creams, and Catherine de’ Medici allegedly brought the concept to France when she married King Henry II in 1533, though historians debate whether this is true or just a story the French invented to credit Italy for something while simultaneously feeling superior about it.

By the 17th century, iced desserts had become fashionable across European courts. Kings and nobles served them at banquets to impress guests. The guests, to be fair, were impressable — life before refrigeration meant that serving something cold in summer was basically magic. If you could put a bowl of something frozen in front of a visiting dignitary in July, you were essentially a wizard.

The 18th Century: Ice Cream Goes Public

For much of its early history, ice cream was strictly for the wealthy. This is because ice itself was a luxury — harvested from frozen ponds in winter, packed in sawdust, and stored underground in “ice houses.” You had to be fairly serious about your dessert to go through all that trouble.

But by the 1700s, ice cream shops — or “confectioners” — began appearing in Europe and the American colonies. The first recorded ice cream advertisement in America appeared in a 1777 newspaper in New York, and the founding fathers were apparently fans. George Washington reportedly spent around $200 on ice cream in the summer of 1790, which, adjusting for inflation, is roughly “an alarming amount of money for ice cream.” Thomas Jefferson brought an 18-step recipe for vanilla ice cream back from France, because while he had many, many flaws, his taste in desserts was apparently impeccable.

The 19th Century: The Industrial Revolution Saves Dessert

For most of human history, making ice cream required snow or winter ice, an aristocratic budget, and the patience of a saint. Then, in the 1840s, everything changed. An American woman named Nancy Johnson invented the hand-cranked ice cream freezer, and suddenly ordinary people could make the stuff at home. This was arguably more important than several other things that happened that century.

Around the same time, the ice trade was booming. Entrepreneur Frederic Tudor — dubbed the “Ice King” — began harvesting ice from New England lakes and shipping it around the world. He was, by all accounts, a man who would not stop talking about ice at dinner parties. He made a fortune anyway.

By the late 1800s, ice cream had become a genuine mass phenomenon. Ice cream parlors spread across America and Europe. Soda fountains became social hubs. And then, in the 1890s, came the ice cream soda — a creation so beloved that some American states apparently tried to ban it on Sundays, because it was considered too pleasurable for the Sabbath. The solution was to serve the ice cream without the soda and call it a “sundae.” God, it was argued, would not object to a sundae. Religious authorities of the 19th century were apparently willing to negotiate on this.

The Cone, the Bar, and the Truck

The ice cream cone, now so ubiquitous it feels eternal, was invented around 1904, at the St. Louis World’s Fair. The story goes that an ice cream vendor ran out of dishes and a neighboring waffle vendor rolled up a waffle to help out. Whether this is entirely true or a charming myth polished by repetition, no one can say for certain, but it’s a good story and the cone exists, so something happened.

The 20th century brought a parade of innovations. The Good Humor Bar was patented in 1923, putting chocolate-coated ice cream on a stick and thereby inventing the concept of “eating ice cream while walking around feeling carefree,” which remains one of humanity’s finest activities. The soft-serve machine arrived in the 1930s and ’40s. Dairy Queen opened in 1940. A young Margaret Thatcher — future Prime Minister of the United Kingdom — worked as a food scientist on a team that helped develop a method for making soft-serve ice cream with more air, which means she contributed to both the Cold War and the soft-serve revolution. History contains multitudes.

The ice cream truck appeared in the mid-20th century, its tinkling music becoming one of the most Pavlovian sounds ever devised. To this day, a significant portion of adults will hear those jingles and immediately begin searching for loose change.

The Modern Age: We Have Gone Too Far

Today, ice cream is a global industry worth tens of billions of dollars. There are over 1,000 flavors commercially available. We have salted caramel, black sesame, lavender honey, and sriracha. We have nitrogen-frozen ice cream assembled tableside like a magic trick. We have vegan ice cream, keto ice cream, protein ice cream, and ice cream sandwiched inside croissants, donuts, and other ice cream.

Japan produces flavors including squid ink, raw horse, and eel. These exist. People eat them. The world is large and full of choices, and ice cream has somehow expanded to contain all of it.

The average American eats roughly 20 pounds of ice cream per year, which sounds like a lot until you consider how good ice cream is, at which point it sounds reasonable. World production is in the billions of liters annually. We have, as a species, committed to this particular frozen dream with an enthusiasm that Alexander the Great, Nero, and Emperor Taizong — sitting on their mountains of snow, surrounded by servants — could never have imagined.