Through the Ice Pages: Scoop Two

Published in 1855, The Book of Ices was Mrs A.B. Marshall’s first publication. Continuing to write three other books, of which her last was Fancy Ices published in 1894, Mrs Marshall’s work on ices is considered amongst the finest. However, as the London Canal Museum also notes in an article on their website, Mrs Marshall is not as well-known today as other female cooks, such as Mrs Beeton. If you would like to find out more about Mrs A.B. Marshall, I have attached a link to the London Canal Museum’s website below.      
       

http://www.canalmuseum.org.uk/ice/marshall.htm

In The Book of Ices, there are several exquisite illustrations, which are extremely detailed and colourful. Designed using moulds, these ices would certainly tempt and amaze individuals. Accustomed to ice cream being moulded in rectangular or circular containers, when first observing these colour plates, I was intrigued to see ices moulded into such wonderful shapes and displays. Collecting my thoughts, I soon began to remember the novelty shaped jelly and ice lolly moulds of childhood cooking, which subsequently made me consider why jelly castles or rocket shaped lollies are exciting to children and adults alike. I refer to adults, as I believe that although our tastes and choices develop, generally becoming more sophisticated in adulthood, we still enjoy experiencing and reviving the fun of childhood, particularly through using food. Contemplating the reasons for our admiration of novelty shaped food, an idea which dominated by thoughts was the notion of food as art. It seems this notion was central to Vincent La Chapelle and Mrs Marshall’s work on ices.
        

In view of this idea, when studying the asparagus ice illustration from The Book of Ices, it strangely reminded me of Wall’s mint Viennetta ice cream. Consisting of chocolate layers separating a ripple of delicious vanilla ice cream, Viennetta is certainly an ice cream masterpiece which I always enjoy admiring and devouring. In Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1861), the idea of food as art is also communicated. When Mrs Beeton discusses the serving of ices, noting that dessert ices were typically moulded and when not were served in glasses accompanied with wafers (315), it is indicated that presentation was essential to the serving of ices and somewhat contributed towards demonstrating a successfully managed Victorian household. Today it seems the latter of these two serving options is greatly used, as ice cream served in glass dishes drizzled with chocolate or strawberry sauce and decorated with wafers, sprinkles and flakes is a design which will always tempt the taste buds of any ice cream lover. This is often demonstrated when my family and I visit the Harvester restaurant on special occasions and someone orders a Rocky Horror Ice cream. Consisting of vanilla ice cream, hot fudge cake and fudge pieces, topped with cream, this dessert is the ultimate ice cream guilty pleasure and often results in anyone who did not order a dessert, as they were to full from dinner, miraculously finding they are still a bit hungry and asking the waitress for an extra spoon. 
   

An extra topping fact

Featuring Christina cornets in her book, Fancy Ices (1894), Mrs Marshall is considered to be the founder of the ice cream cone. These cornets were frozen and filled with vanilla ice cream and dried fruits. They were also “piped with royal icing and ... dipped in chopped, blanched pistachio nuts” (35). In their work, the Weirs also discuss Margaret cornets, which were served with apple ice cream.

During my research, I came across this article written by Heston Blumenthal, which includes recipes for Mrs Marshall’s almond cornets and apple ice cream. 
 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2002/may/11/foodanddrink.shopping).

Heston also shares his childhood memory of eating ice cream and a vanilla ice cream recipe.

Publishing Ices

In Ice Creams, Sorbets & Gelati: The Definitive Guide, Caroline and Robin Weir acknowledge that Mrs Mary Eales, a supposed royal confectioner or confectionary supplier to Queen Anne, was the first individual to publish an ice cream recipe within an English cookery book. This book was published in 1718, entitled, Mrs Mary Eales Receipts (18). The Weir’s continue to note the publication of many cookbooks and ice cream recipes including: Vincent La Chapelle’s book, The Modern Cook (1733), which significantly discusses the decorative use of ices and moulds (18); Emy’s, L’Art de Bien Faire les Glaces d’Office (Paris, 1768), a guidebook to making ices, which was also the first publication to be entirely written on ices (20); and Mrs Agnes B. Marshall’s, The Book of Ices (UK,1885).

                                       The Book of Ices    

Through the Ice Pages

Being an absolutely awful cook, embarrassingly proven the other night when I managed to microwave a meal to an inedible state, I generally regard cookbooks as magical food bibles of pleasure and inspiration. This viewpoint may seem exaggerated, but cookbooks to me are like fairytale food stories. Describing the friendships and adventures of ingredients from the mixing bowl to the serving plate, the happy endings of recipes, being the creation of delightful and tantalising foods, are as unreal to me as the idea of a fairy godmother transforming me into Nigella Lawson, or Prince Charming rescuing me from the culinary witch’s terrible cook spell. Considering this, it is probably not surprising that I generally refrain from creatively cooking (tinned tomato puree pasta, with grated cheese being one of my cooking specialities). However, by using my imagination when reading recipes, or enjoying the food illustrations which accompany them, I still enjoy the magic of cooking. I am aware this may sound strange, but I suppose the point I am trying to make is that cooking is about enjoying the style, language and presentation of a recipe, as much as it is about enjoying the food prepared.

During my childhood, a food which I was always fond of making was Hedgehog shaped bread, a recipe which appeared in a Rosie and Jim annual we owned. Though, as you might have already guessed, my finished bread generally did not resemble a healthy looking hedgehog, despite my mum and dad praising its likeness, I always enjoyed following the recipe’s easy step-by-step guide and admiring its colourful illustrations. Another recipe I always enjoyed making with my mum was coconut ice. Assigned to adding the final ingredients to the coconut ice mixture after it had cooled, I would often whilst waiting to do my job admire the cookbook’s illustrations. The illustration which I always spent the most time observing was a photograph of sweets. Displaying, fudge, peppermint creams, chocolate coconut pyramids and other delicious confectionary, this page transported me to sweet heaven. Today, the boxed sweets which centre in the middle of the photograph remind me of the confectionary boxes which feature in the film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s novel, Matilda (1988/1996) and the movie Forrest Gump (1994).

  Photograph from,

 Marguerite Patten's Cookbook.

In Matilda, there is a scene in which Miss Honey and Matilda enter Miss Trunchbull’s home and find a chocolate box which belonged to Miss Honey’s father. Carved out of wood and decorated with an elegant gold design, there is something enchanting about this chocolate box, which presents each delicately wrapped chocolate as exquisite and magical. Just by observing these chocolates, you are able to taste and sense the pleasure of eating them.  This notion of sensing food through its presentation is greatly demonstrated in Elizabeth David’s, A Book of Mediterranean Food (1950), as the introductions, ingredients and language of recipes, evoke the appearance, smells and freshness of Mediterranean cooking. This transports the reader to an idyllic paradise, as they sense the pleasures of being on holiday. In view of the notion, that visual and linguistic representations of food can stimulate our taste buds and make food more desirable, as we seek the created pleasures of our senses and imaginations, I would like to consider further the argument I make in my opening post. This being that ice cream is highly popular due to the way it is presented to us.  

  Which ice cream would you choose?

However, to avoid making this post to long, I have decided to split it into two scoops and explore the presentation of ice cream in the second. Though this post seems to digress from my ice cream blog subject, it was actually motivated by some colour plates from Mrs A.B. Marshall’s, The Book of Ices (1885), which I purchased at the London Canal Museum. Extremely colourful and emulating the creativity of cooking, these colour plates made me think about what entices us to cook a particular recipe, or to cook from a certain cookbook. Similarly, it made me consider what seduces us to select a specific dish from the pages of a restaurant’s menu, contemplating overall the power of language and imagery. This leads to the question:

Will food which is impressively and imaginatively presented through language and imagery, generally fail the expectations of our imaginations when eaten?                           

Share the Scoop!

Having enjoyed reading the blog comments people have posted, sharing their childhood memories and thoughts about ice cream, I have decided to create a post specifically for sharing any memories, thoughts, or views you have about ice cream.

To break the ice, I pose the question:  What was your favourite childhood ice cream?

 Happy sharing!

An Ice Well of History

Situated down a quiet side street in King’s Cross, the London Canal Museum is a hidden treasure of London’s ice cream and canal history. Housing ice wells built by Carlo Gatti in 1857-1858 and 1862-1863, the museum also tells the story of Gatti and his ice trade. Entering the museum, you are immediately greeted by an ice cream bicycle featuring the slogan, “ICE CREAM, STOP ME AND BUY ONE” and this is certainly a museum you should stop by and visit if you are interested in discovering the history of ice cream. 

An Ice Well.

Though, as the museum acknowledges, Walls were the first company to use ice cream bicycles in London around 1923, the street vending of ice cream was a prominent business in London before this time. Thought to have first been sold in Carlo Gatti’s shops (1850-53) at Hungerford Market (which is now the site of Charing Cross railway station), the penny ice was popularly sold in London’s confectionaries and on the streets by Italian ice cream sellers, who later became known as the Hokey Pokey men (18). Served in small glass dishes the penny ice, also known as the penny lick, was an affordable and generally profitable means of street vending ice cream. However, it was also very unhygienic as the reusable glass dishes were often not washed after customers had licked ice cream from them. Hooray, for the invention of the ice cream cone! Considered responsible for the spreading of diseases, such as tuberculosis, penny lick dishes were banned in the 1920s. Alternatively to the penny lick, customers could also purchase a Hokey Pokey, which was a slice of ice cream wrapped in a waxy paper.

Penny Lick Dishes.

Another striking feature of the museum is the several presentation boxes containing ice cream memorabilia. Filled with penny lick dishes, ice cream scoops, wafer holders, Hokey Pokey moulds, ice cream menus and recipe books, the displays are fascinating and exciting. Despite finding all the articles interesting, the item I got most excited about discovering was Astronaut Ice Cream, a freeze dried ice cream invented for space. Remembering the dehydrated foods of my school camping trips, the idea of freeze dried ice cream at first did not appeal to me. However, the  novelty and packaging of Astronaut Ice Cream actually makes me want to find out what it tastes like. Having found out that you can purchase Astronaut Ice Cream online, including freeze dried Neapolitan, who knows this could be the beginning of a new ice cream passion (though, probably not).     

Astronaut Ice Cream! 

The London Canal Museum

Although this video does not focus on the history of ice cream, I thought it would be a nice introduction to my next blog post and the London Canal museum. The majority of the video is about London’s canal history, but if you forward the video to one minute and twenty seconds there is a brief introduction to London’s ice trade and Carlo Gatti; an individual who contributed significantly to Britain's mass consumption of ice cream.  

     

Icy Beginnings

Covered in a candyfloss and sugar pink coating, Ice Creams, Sorbets & Gelati, The Definitive Guide (2010) is a sweet treat that all ice cream lovers should tuck into. Described as “the ultimate ice-cream lover’s bible with over 400 heavenly recipes,” Caroline and Robin Weir’s book is an essential ingredient to any ice cream collection. Purchasing this work to research the history of ice cream, I was not disappointed, as the Weir’s extensive exploration and efficient presentation of ice cream’s development, makes the text delightfully digestible. Chronologically structured from circa 300 to 1995, the book’s Origins & History section recognises the first record of ice cream as an “iced-milk” (13), originating in China amid 618-907 and continues to acknowledge the first written account of “ices being served in England” (16) in 1672, by Elias Ashmole. Ashmole notes the serving of ice cream to the King’s table during the Feast of St George (28^th-29^th May 1671). Continuing to scoop through this delectable timeline of frozen delights, a year which captured my attention was 1850, a year in which Carlo Gatti established the ‘Hokey Pokey’, penny ice and resulted in me doing the hokey-cokey to the London Canal Museum.