FROZEN FOOD
OCTOBER 5, 20201
Evolution Of The Ice Cream
The evolution of ice cream is a long history from delicious frozen food to industrial commodity today.
Ice cream is a sweetened frozen food eaten as a snack or dessert. Typically it made from dairy milk or cream or by whisking a flavored cream base and liquid nitrogen together. It is a colloidal emulsion made with water, ice, milk fat, milk protein, sugar and air with water and fat being the highest proportions by weight.
The mixture is cooled below the freezing point of water and stirred. The outcome is a smooth, semi solid foam that is solid at very low temperatures (below 2º Celcius or 35º Fahrenheit).
The origin of this frozen desserts are unclear. Some sources describes ice cream like foods from Persia as far back to 550 BCE, others claim that the Roman Emperor Nero ordered ice collected from the Apenine Mountains to produce the first sorbet, a frozen dessert made from sugar-sweetened water with flavoring such as wine or honey.
Other claims that ice cream originated in the Mongol Empire and spread to China following their expansion. The introduction to Europe also attributed to Arab traders sometimes and often involved Marco Polo.
Around 500 BC snow was used to cool drinks in Greece. But the snow that collected from the lower slopes of mountains was unsanitary and iced drinks would cause convulsions, colic and stomach problems. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs show a snow-filled vessel next to fruit juice while the Tang dynasty from China records of a chilled dessert.
Simply said, ice and snow were precious ingredients in ancient cuisines including Japanese, Chinese, Greek and Roman food.
Before the development of modern refrigeration, ice cream was a luxury cuisine served for special occasions. The process was hard and complex as ice was cut from lakes and ponds during winter and stored in holes in the ground. Some stored in wood frame or brick ice houses insulated by straw.
In modern times, a common method for producing ice cream at home is to use an ice cream maker, a machine that mix the ingredients for the ice cream while cooled inside a household freezer.
Ice cream can be mass produced and widely available around the world. Ice cream can be purchased from supermarkets and grocery stores. In 2015, US produced nearly 900 millions gallons of ice cream with people eat 23 litres ice cream per year – the highest in the world, followed by Australians and New Zealanders as biggest ice cream consumers in the world, eating 18 litres and 20 litres per person each year respectively.
related post