Icecream Journal

We’re a day late with this announcement, but we wanted to wish a very happy third birthday to the Ice Cream Journal. That’s right, three years ago the Journal burst onto the scene as one of the only all-ice cream blogs in existence and it’s stronger than ever today thanks to thousands of ice cream loving readers! And with that, here’s a another edition of Ask Ernie:

JANICE K. OF SCRANTON, PA ASKS: What was the first ice cream flavor ever?

Good question, Janice. We’d all like to think it was chocolate chip cookie dough or Moose Tracks, but that’s not the case.

We know in the 4th century B.C. that Roman emperor Nero sent servants into the mountains to retrieve snow, which was then flavored with honey, nuts and other fruit toppings, but that’s not really ice cream because it contains no milk or cream. Some of the earliest frozen treats to use milk and cream originated in the Middle East around the 10th century A.D. These desserts (I’m assuming they were eaten for dessert) were also flavored with fruit and nuts.

But if you’re looking for the first modern ice cream recipes — the stuff that most closely resembles the ice cream we know and love today — you’ll have to go back in time to 18th century England and America. It was then that one of the earliest ice cream recipes was printed in a book called Mrs. Mary Eale’s Receipts. Mrs. Eale describes making ice cream with “Cherries, Rasberries, Currants, or Strawberries.”

It was around this time, or maybe a little earlier, that Europeans were working hard on perfecting the art of freezing flavored cream. They, too, added fruits to their recipes, but they also added grated cheese and candied orange flower. According to the article “Asparagus Ice Cream, Anyone?“, not all of their creations were successes, as in the case of the aforementioned pureed asparagus ice cream and foie gras ice cream (yes, duck livers).

So, it’s likely that the first ever ice cream flavor was some sort of fruit flavor. You’d be inclined to think the first flavor was vanilla, because vanilla is the base for so many other flavors, but that would require early ice cream makers to add vanilla bean or vanilla extract to their iced cream concoction and there’s no evidence of that in the earliest days. Still, vanilla was one of the first widely produced and enjoyed flavors of the modern era (19th century to the present). Even today, vanilla is the number one selling flavor in the world, which is quite an achievement considering all the other great flavors in existence!