Ice cream is a popular frozen dairy food. It consists mostly of milk products, sugar and water. Ingredients called emulsifiers and stabilizers hold the mixture together. Ice cream manufacturers make their product in hundreds of flavors, but about half the ice cream sold in the United States is vanilla. Chocolate and strawberry rank next in popularity.

No one knows when ice cream was first made. There are claims that in the first century, Nero enjoyed an "ice-cream-like dessert." Nero had servants run to the mountains for fresh snow and then race back to the palace before it melted so he could enjoy the frozen treat topped with fresh fruit. In 1295 the Italian trader Marco Polo returned to Europe from China and may have brought recipes for water ices. During the 1600s, Europeans used a combination of ice, snow and a mineral called saltpeter to freeze mixtures of cream, fruit and spices.

English colonists probably brought recipes for ice cream to America in the early 1700s. Ice cream became a popular luxury food. Thomas Jefferson had a recipe for vanilla ice cream. George Washington paid almost $200 for a specific recipe, and James and Dolley Madison served ice cream at their second inaugural ball. Almost all ice cream was made at home and limited in quantity of production and popularity due to the enormous effort needed to make it. Home production, during this period of time, included two large bowls, lots of ice and salt and 40 minutes of shaking one bowl while stirring the other.

Nancy Johnson developed the first hand-crank ice cream maker in 1847 and received a patent for it. She sold the rights to William Young for $200. The new machine was called the Johnson Patent Ice-Cream Freezer.

In 1851, Jacob Fussell, a Baltimore milk dealer, established the first ice cream plant. Ice cream became a national favorite during the early 1900s after soda fountains introduced sodas, sundaes and other ways of serving it.

Italo Marciony emigrated to the United States in the late 1800s. He began his business selling his homemade lemon ice from a single pushcart on Wall Street in New York City. His business quickly grew, and soon he had many carts. Although he was successful, he still had a small problem that was causing him to lose money. At the time, most ice cream from vendors was sold in serving glasses called "penny licks" mainly because ice cream was licked from the glass, and it cost a penny. Sanitation was a major problem, but a larger problem was that many people would accidently break the glasses or, not so accidently, walk off with them. His first solution was to make cone-like containers out of paper. Later, he came up with the idea of making an edible container for his cool treat. In 1896, he began baking edible waffle cups with sloping sides and a flat bottom, shaped like his serving glass. It was an instant hit. In December 1903, he was issued a patent for his ice cream cone. Ice cream cones were first served at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, and ice cream bars appeared in 1921.

Ice cream production increased greatly during the late 1940s following World War II. During the 1970s the United States produced over 775 million gallons of ice cream yearly. Ice cream is served in many parts of the world, but Americans eat more of it than do the people of any other country. Americans eat an average of about 23 quarts of ice cream annually. Perhaps that gave rise to a kids' chant, "I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!"

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Resources: www.zingersicecream.com; World Book Encyclopedia