Selects: How Ice Cream Works

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1:08I scream-a, you scream-a, we all scream-a for How Ice Cream Works, the great episode celebrating the best dessert treat, in all honesty. I mean, it's just nothing better than ice cream. This is from February 5th, 2015. I don't eat ice cream much anymore because it disagrees with my body, But boy, every now and then, I get one of those pints, get a little chubby hubby if you can find it, throw it down your throat, and suffer the consequences.

1:40Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

1:49Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry. so this is Stuff You Should Know, the Dreaming of Summer in the Middle of Winter edition. Oh, my friend, ice cream is a year-round treat for me. Yeah? Sure. I know, I had some last night. Oh, yeah? What'd you have? We're going to buzzmark it a lot, probably. Rocky Road and Vividly Vanilla. What brand is that? Kroger. Oh, yeah? Yeah, they were delicious. Nice. Was it heavy or light? It was light. Yeah. Yeah, after reading this, I was like, man, this is very light. A lot of air in there. I taught myself to juggle with them.

2:27Oh, well, that's exciting. That was a cross-reference. Yeah, I'm a Ben and Jerry's guy. Well, yeah, it's great stuff. Yeah, can't have too much of it, though, because I got the lactose issues. Really? Yeah. And ice cream is your favorite treat? Yeah, it's pretty sad. That's self-hate. Yeah, ice cream followed by a large glass of milk. Right? No, just kidding. Then you just inject a bunch of caseins directly into your neck? fall over? It's not like I don't have lactose issues such that any kind of milk product really, it's just if I overdose on it. Like if I have a bunch of pizza and ice cream or something.

3:05What do they call it? Mildly sensitive maybe? Mildly intolerant? Yeah, I get the poopy butt. You're cool with lactose at work, but you don't want lactose marrying your kid. You're that kind of intolerant to lactose, right? Exactly. I just don't want it living next door to me. I can do a pint of ice cream, though. Is it the half pint? The Ben & Jerry's little one? I think it's a pint. Is it a pint? Not the little baby one. That's just like a fistful. I'm not seven. Yeah, right. I think it's a pint is what they sell them in. Yeah, I can do a pint of the Chubby Hubby. That's my old favorite. That's a good one.

3:46Well, basically any Ben & Jerry's is good. I'm not a big fan of cherries and stuff. Ooh, me neither. But other than that, I'm pretty cool with all ice cream. And I used to not like bananas and things, but now I'm like, I'm cool with bananas. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Like bananas and ice cream I would never have eaten before, and now I will. I'm pretty picky with my ice cream flavors. I'm trying to think of one I really don't like, and nothing's coming to mind except for stuff with cherry in it. Yeah, I don't like mint. Crazy. I don't like coconut. Crazy. My favorite is the Chubby Hubby, and then they have the limited runs.

4:24Yeah. They have one out now called Candy Bar Pie. Candy Bar Pie? Like what kind of candy bar is it modeled after? It's ridiculous. I don't know. It's got nougat in it. It doesn't taste like a specific candy bar, though. It's not like they're trying to be like a Snickers ice cream sneakily. It just tastes, it's just delicious. Nice. I will have to try that. I like Butterfinger in ice cream. Yeah. What about, so like places to get ice cream? Jenny's is delicious. Where is that? They have it here on the west side over by Star Provisions. Okay. And they got a new one in Croc Street Market. There's a place in Old Town, Alexandria, outside of D.C.

5:03Oh, yeah. Called Pops. It's like an old-timey ice cream parlor. Awesome. I think I went in there, actually, last summer. It's awesome. But did they have, like, candy and all that stuff? Or is it just an ice cream shop? It's pretty much just ice cream. Oh, okay. There's like a couple of long cases. They've got the old turn of the last century furniture and everything and the striped wallpaper. They're doing it right, but then their ice cream stands behind it too. It's good. And then, of course, Friendly's. Yeah. Friendly's has the Reese's Pizza Sundae, which is probably the greatest ice cream treat ever created in the history of humanity.

5:43Yeah, growing up in Atlanta, they had something called Ferrell's, which was— I remember Ferrell's. Oh, did they have those? They had that in Ohio, too. And on your birthday, they'd come out with that big drum. Oh, yeah. Scare me to death. I went under the table a couple of times. Just like old school ice cream parlor, scaring the bejesus out of children everywhere. Now, they had a lot of candy selection, too. Yeah. Yeah. Man, let's just talk about, let's just not even do this. Let's just talk about ice cream we love. I like this flavor. I like this flavor. Everyone's starving right now for it, though.

6:12I guarantee it with that intro. I have one more, though. have you ever been to the Plaza Fiesta I think is what it's called over on Beaufort Highway yeah oh yeah they have a gelato place there that had tuna flavored gelato raw tuna flavored gelato and by god it tasted exactly like raw tuna flavor I thought you were going to say it was good it wasn't bad if you eat sashimi or something like that you would appreciate this It's not something you're like, oh, man, I've got to get some tuna-flavored gelato. Right. It's not like one bite and you spit it out. Yeah, yeah. You're just like, this is really odd.

6:54Interesting. Unusually tasty. I'll have to try that. Yeah. My other thing I like lately is a little heat in the ice cream. Like some of them have a little cayenne in the chocolate. Oh, yeah, with cinnamon or something. Yeah, that and some salted caramel. I am so over salted caramel or bacon and sweetness. I'm just so sick of that combination. Really? Yeah. It's all basically a ripoff of Wendy's fries and a Frosty dip together. That's good, too. That's fine. That's the original. That one needed no improvement. All right. Well, I'm salivating now. I am as well. Let's get through this, and we can go get some ice cream, okay?

7:35Yay. You're buying. Okay. So the history of ice cream, Chuck. How long could it possibly have been around? Where did you find this, by the way? We need to give a good shout. Was that the Dairy Association? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I think the International Dairy Association, the big guy. Not the regional Dairy Association? They came up with this history of ice cream or frozen dairy treats is a better way to put it. Because ice cream is the lion's share of frozen dairy treats, but technically it falls under the umbrella of frozen dairy treats. Along with things like sherbet and gelato and frozen yogurt.

8:14Right, or ice cream sandwiches. Yeah, novelties. Exactly. Those are good, too. Well, my friend, it goes back, they say, as far as 2nd century B.C., but they can't pinpoint a definite person or place for sure. Right. They just know that it started popping up in history, like with Alexander the Great. He had flavored ice and snow with honey and nectar. Yeah, a snow cone. Yeah, and that makes sense that that would be the origin of ice cream. It makes me laugh in this thing. They said that Nero and Claudius Caesar would frequently send runners to the mountains for snow. Right. That just seems like a very Roman emperor thing to do.

8:53Like, I'd like something cold and sweet. Go! Right. And like three hours later, they'd come back, you know, half dead. Yeah. Here is your ice. Snow cone. Exactly. But they would flavor those with fruits and juices, and that was sort of another part of the beginning of ice cream. Apparently all this is going on in a vacuum, too, like over in Asia. In different places? Yeah, in the Mideast and Asia, wherever they had mountains in these areas, and they could get snow and ice. Because Marco Polo, in I think the 13th century, came back to Italy and said, check this idea out. Yeah. Frozen fruit treats.

9:34And that was basically the origin of ice cream in the West. Yeah, in England, they were big on what they called cream ice. Yeah. Because it's England. You've got to say it's slightly funny. Or they would probably call it proper. Right. You know? There's an E at the end of cream. Is there? No. No, but there probably wasn't. There would be. And Catherine DiMedici, who we mentioned in the episode... Oh, Nostradamus. Nostradamus episode. That's right. She was big on it. and she was the wife of Henry II. And back then, though, it was, you know, in the 1500s, in the 16th century, it was only, like, for royalty because ice was, you know, they didn't have freezers and they didn't have ice machines.

10:20You needed a guy to go run up to the mountain and bring it down. Yeah, no, it was a big deal to have ice. Unless, of course, it was winter, in which case you were like, oh, yeah, I can have a frozen treat. But if it were summer and you were enjoying a frozen dairy treat. Send the runner. You're rich. Yeah. You're super rich. So apparently by about the 17th century, there was at least one cafe in Paris. I think it was the first cafe in Paris that started selling ice cream to the public in 1660. Nice. They basically made it egalitarian. And from that point on, ice cream was a definite luxury item, but you didn't have to be royalty to obtain it.

11:05Yeah, that's a good way of saying it. Yeah. In the United States, the first time they found it in print was in a letter in 1744 by a guest of the governor of Maryland, William Bladden, and there was an ad in 1777, May 12th, the New York Gazette for ice cream. So it was for sure for sale to the people back then. Right. By that time. Yeah. Yeah. George Washington had a recipe. Thomas Jefferson had a recipe. Dolly Madison used to like to serve it at the White House. George Washington ate a lot of it, right? Didn't he say$200 for one summer? Yeah, and I failed to go to the West Egg currency converter.

11:47That's a lot of ice cream. I imagine that's a lot of money. Yeah, but he had guests, and he may have shared it with his staff. Oh, I would hope so. Especially if that's like$50 ,000 worth of ice cream. That would be a lot. You can't eat that in one summer. even if you're Joey Chestnut, world record holder for most ice cream eating. Is he? Yeah. How much did he eat, you know? 1.8 gallons in six minutes. 1.8 gallons in six minutes. That doesn't seem like that much. Oh, that's a lot. Yeah, that's pretty speedy. Yeah, it is. But hey, that's why he's Joey Chestnut. Plus, don't forget the brain freeze.

12:21Oh, yeah. Man. Do you have a thing on that? Brain freeze? No, I've done a Don't Be Dumb on it, though, before. Do you remember what it is? Like, what is brain freeze? Yeah. Oh, what is brain freeze? Yeah. There's a blood vessel that runs from your brain into the roof of your mouth that becomes constricted, which changes the volume of your brain, which gives you a headache. Gotcha. Which is why if you place your tongue against the roof of your mouth while you have brain freeze, it warms up that blood vessel, allowing it to relax again. Or just light a match and hold that under the roof of your mouth.

13:02That's another way to go. You'll concentrate on that pain instead of the brain freeze. Interesting. I don't get brain freeze because I think as an adult you know how not to wolf it down like that. I've gotten it accidentally, though, as an adult from time to time. Really? Yeah. No good? No, it's terrible. It's as terrible as an adult as it is when you're a child. It's probably worse as an adult. It's just debilitating, you know? Yeah. It's so painful. So like you said, until around 1800, it was mostly for the upper class. But then, like everything else in industry in America around that time, manufacturing became more widespread and cheaper, and all of a sudden you had warehouses that were big freezers, and you had shipping.

13:48You could ship things cold and frozen. Right, so you had the manufacturing aspect in place. Yeah, homogenizer machines, electric power, mechanical refrigeration, basically. But even still, you had the manufacturing in place. The distribution, though, was still limited to, say, like a store. Somebody who could make money by investing in some freezer cases and then selling it to the public. It wasn't until ice boxes became widespread in America that the ice cream industry really blew up. Because then you could sell to the guy down at Pops. You could also sell to Pop's next-door neighbor who took it home to keep in his freezer.

14:28And thank God that happened. Yeah, and actually, as far as making ice cream, the hand-crank ice cream maker that used rock salt and all that stuff, that was invented by a woman named Nancy Johnson in the 1850s, I think. Yeah. And she patented it, and apparently everybody ripped her off. She sold the patent for like 200 bucks, and the guy who bought it from her turned around and made a fortune off of it. But I guess he ultimately got ripped off by a bunch of copycats. But that same thing is still in use today. You can go buy— The Johnson Crank. That same—yeah, the Johnson Crank ice cream maker and make your own ice cream the 1850s way.

15:13Well, you mentioned take-home ice cream being a big deal as far as it's spreading. I do have a little modern stat. Oh, yeah. or at least from a few years ago. That is still the biggest part of the market. 67 % of the overall market is take-home ice cream. Well, I saw that 87 % of Americans have ice cream in their freezer right now. Yeah, I don't. I can't. It doesn't stick around? No, like, you know, if you're going to get a pint, you might as well just plow through it and be done with it and then get some a few weeks later. You're not a quitter. No, and I can't just keep, like, a gallon of ice cream in the house.

15:50Oh, that's a bad move. That's a bad move for me. Yeah, it's a bad move for everybody. Well, no, some people have willpower. Yeah, I guess you're right. You're one of them. I don't keep a gallon of ice cream in my house. Yeah, but you got willpower to a large degree, I think. Yeah, well. You're the guy who quit smoking by just saying, I'm not going to smoke anymore. Yeah, that's true. You know? Yeah, I guess I do have a degree of willpower. But I do not. So we're now in the 19th century and late 1800s, 1900s and the professional soda jerk at soda fountain shops pops up and they make things called like root beer floats and coke floats and soda floats.

16:26Right. Which I haven't had one in a long time. I used to love root beer floats. Yeah. But I don't know why. It's not something I see very much anymore. Well, you have to go to the trouble of putting it together. Yourself? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You don't see floats very often anymore. I'm sure there's some places that sell them, but yeah. They were good though. Oh yeah, man. And root beer and ice cream is a winning combination. Yeah, I mean, I haven't had one since I was a kid, probably. Coke works, too. Yeah. Coke floats good, too. Root beer floats are the thing, though. I think you're right.

16:57And then this was, for me, the fact of the show. I did not know about this. Religious criticism back then, they didn't like you eating things that were so rich and, like, gluttonous, I guess. They thought it was sinful. Yeah, well, yeah. On Sundays, that is. And so in response, they took out the carbonated water or the root beer or whatever and made a sundae. And that's why they called it a sundae originally. But apparently they were like, are you mocking us? And the soda jerks union said, no, no. And they changed the spelling from S-U-N-D-A-Y to S-U-N-D-A-E. Because they were mocking them. Right.

17:32Yes. And they were like, this is their act of retribution, changing the spelling of sundae. And the other cool thing, too, was during World War II, apparently, it was the armed forces were all trying to outstep one another in providing ice cream to the troops in new and exciting ways because it was such a morale booster, of course, to get ice cream when you're at war. Right. You know, a little taste of home. And I think, was it the Navy that had the ship? Yeah, the world's first floating ice cream parlor. That's awesome, in the Western Pacific. Well, even before that, in World War I, ice cream was deemed an essential food.

18:07And so ice cream manufacturers got rations of sugar so they could keep making ice cream during the war, even though everything else was being rationed. Yeah, and Ed points out that during the Depression, everything kind of slowed down that was a non-essential, including ice cream. But it never went away. And through the years, it's pretty much gained in popularity. I think in the 70s is when you started to see a little more health conscious efforts. Yeah. Like the frozen yogurts and the like. Froyo. Froyo. Right. Emily loves the Froyo. It's good stuff. Like the new stuff that's really like from the Greek yogurt, you know?

18:45Oh, yeah. That's tangy. Changes everything. Not like, I think this can't be yogurt growing up. Was that even yogurt? That was just like soft serve ice cream, wasn't it? Is it this can't be? I thought it was the country's best yogurt. TCBY? We heard it was this can't be yogurt. Maybe it was different, I wonder. It had to be the same. Yeah, TCBY. Yeah. No, TCBY was great. I don't know what it was. I think it's still around. It had to be yogurt because they couldn't call it that. But it wasn't definitely not the tangy stuff that you see like at Pinkberry and stuff like that. Oh, it's so good. Yeah, I'm not the hugest fan.

19:21I love that stuff. Each bite is just like it's just a trip through a flowery meadow. Every bite. Really? Yes. I love it. Do you get the vanilla and add your stuff to it? I get the regular, like the, yeah, just the, I guess, plain version. Yeah. And then you throw in a little mango, some blueberries. Oh, look at you. The white yogurt chips on top. Uh-huh. That's a good combination. Or if you want to go a different route, there's like, you know, a chocolate crunch and maybe some other kind of chocolatey delicious treat on top. Man, I want some ice cream so bad. All right. Well, we'll get to the science of ice cream, which is decidedly less yummy sounding right after these messages.

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22:50So, buddy, you said that all of that stuff is frozen dairy treats. Right. But not necessarily ice cream because there's a definition, correct? Yes. So ice cream is a colloid, right? Yeah. Which is an unusual and complex substance. And actually, quicksand is a colloid. It's a colloidal gel. Yeah. Technically. I remember that. But ice cream is a colloid, and a colloid is a substance where you have things that don't normally mix that are mixed together. Right. And in this case, you have fat and sugar and milk mixed together with a little bit of air thrown in. And what you need to create a colloid is something called an emulsifier.

23:37That's the bonding agent that holds everything together, these things that don't normally mix. And in the earliest cases, egg yolks were the emulsifier that held everything together. And, of course, if you're making ice cream at home, you can still use egg yolks as an emulsifier. It's an easy go-to thing. But if you're manufacturing it on a large scale, you're probably using something like xanthan gum or something else to emulsify and stabilize the whole thing to hold it together. But yes, ice cream specifically is a colloid that has undergone a very specific manufacturing process. And if you take or add different ingredients or different steps in the process, then you have something different like frozen yogurt or soft serve ice cream or sherbet.

24:20Yeah, because frozen yogurt isn't just yogurt that they freeze, which I never knew. It's actually during the ice cream making process, they'll put in the yogurt cultures to make it frozen yogurt. Yeah, you don't start with yogurt. You make yogurt during it. Yeah, I didn't know that either. Pretty cool. Agreed. Which is why every time I just throw the yogurt in the freezer, it doesn't taste anything like I want it to taste. It's just really cold yogurt. It's gross. The USDA actually has an ingredient standard for it to be labeled ice cream, which has to be at least 10 % milk fat and a minimum of 6 % nonfat milk solids.

24:59Like caseins. And a gallon has to weigh 4.5 pounds. I think that's neat. Yeah, sure. The federal government can't get its act together on anything, but it can define ice cream. Yeah, and the reason they have the minimum poundage is because, as we mentioned earlier, lighter ice cream is generally cheaper because it means there's just more air whipped in there. And that's why a Ben and Jerry's pint is like a brick in your stomach. Yeah, and the grabster who wrote this points out that that's usually a general rule of thumb, that the heavier the ice cream, the higher quality it is. Yeah. But he points out, to be fair, you need to compare like types.