History
The Food That Built America Recap for Icons of Ice Cream
This week’s episode of The Food That Built America on The History Channel is titled Icons of Ice Cream and talks about how the popular dairy dessert came to be what it is today.
In the Roaring Twenties, sweet treats like candy bars and soda were popular. Ice cream was something people loved, but it was only safely available in ice cream parlors.
Harry Burt decides that he wants to change this and find a way to make ice cream a treat people can eat on the go. He began to experiment with making individually packaged portions of ice cream by topping it with lolipop chocolate on a stick.
Meanwhile, a husband and wife Clara and Russell Stover are working on their own treats, including chocolate covered ice cream. They add coconut butter to make it stay together and come up with the very first ice cream bar….the Eskimo Pie. They became popular and became worth millions.
Harry, for his part, finally comes up with the first ice cream on a stick….the Good Humor bar. It becomes an overnight hit. He wants to expand, so he comes up with the idea of a delivery, or ice cream truck, complete with a bell and the iconic uniform.
It becomes a hit and soon expands nationwide.
In Hartsdale, NY, soft serve ice cream becomes an accidental hit….thanks to Tom Carvel. He experiments with ways to make it work, combining ice cream and custard ingredients and putting them into a custard machine and after a lot of trial and error, gets the creamy dessert we know and love today.
Before long, it expands nationwide….but soon Dairy Queen will prove to be competition.
Carvel comes up with the Flying Saucer ice cream sandwich to get a leg up in the competition….and it helps it expand even more.
Even though ice cream is much loved, it is a seasonal treat, so there needed to be a way to make people buy it year round.
Tom decided to find a way to make people continue to buy ice cream…..by inventing the ice cream cake….including iconic ones like Cookie Puss and Fudgie the Whale.
In Vermont, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield want in on the ice cream business, thanks to Steve’s Ice Cream in Boston, who offered ice cream mixed with different treats such as candies and cookies. They open their first shop in 1978 and have different, unique flavors with chunks of other treats.
While they are successful, winter proves to be difficult on business. It isn’t until someone requests a top for their ice cream that they decide to get in on the to-go option and sell it in grocery stores.
It isn’t quite a hit since it is expensive, so they decide to make punny names for each flavor such as Cherry Garcia and Chunky Monkey.
Not to be outdone, Sam Temperato of Dairy Queen fame, begins working on his own mix-in treats, inspired by Ben and Jerry’s and another ice cream shop—eventually coming up with what we now know as the Blizzard. However, each location needs a special blender to make it work.
Ben and Jerry’s end up getting into trouble with Nabisco for using the Oreo name for their Mint Oreo flavor. Since it is one of their most popular flavors, they decide to rebrand it and come up with Cookie Dough ice cream. Later on, the Mint Oreo would be changed to Mint Chocolate Cookie.
Dairy Queen ends up with a hit on their hands with the Blizzard and made them into a multi-billion dollar business. Other companies would follow suit and come up with their own versions.
Ben and Jerry’s is also worth billions.
About the Author
