History of ice cream in United States

It’s believed that ice cream crossed the Atlantic with European settlers in the 1700s. The best-known cookbooks in early America were published in English in Britain.

Among the earliest British cookbooks with ice cream recipes were Mrs. Eales Receipts by Mary Eales, 1718, and The Modern Cook by Vincent La Chapelle, 1733. Both of these English manuals contained ice cream recipes derived from earlier French source.

The first written record of ice cream in America dates from 1744 when Maryland Governor Thomas Bladen served the delicacy for his guests. It was written in the letter by one of his guests dated on May 17, 1744. 

Thomas Jefferson gets credit for introducing vanilla to America following his tour as Minster to France in 1784-89.

Making ice cream at home got much easier after 1846, when Nancy Johnson invented the first hand-cranked freezer.

The cost of buying ice cream went down when wholesalers went into the business. Milk dealer Jacob Fussell, Jr., led the way and he made ice cream from the extra cream he had during the summer months.

His venture was so successful that he converted his dairy plant into an ice cream plant in 1851 and became ether first commercial ice cream manufacture in the United States.

Two of the most important contributions to development of the industry were perfection of mechanical refrigeration in 1878 and the invention of the direct expansion of ice cream freezer.

In 1920, Harry Burt of Ohio invented the ‘Good Humor Ice Cream Sucker’, a chocolate-covered ice cream on a stick. He also was the first to sell ice cream from trucks, decked out with jingling bells.

Annual production of ice cream in the United States in 1905 was only four million gallons. At that time there was no national trade organization and only one college, the Pennsylvania State College of Agriculture, offered instruction in ice cream manufacture.
History of ice cream in United States