March 30, 2023 • 25 mins
What started off as a treat only enjoyed by the elite soon took over as a yummy bite that all could enjoy. Eva and Maite dive into the origins of nieve (ice cream) and also explore how this dessert was elevated when sugar was added. Plus - chef/owner Fany Gerson, of La Newyorkina (a frozen treats and baked goods shop in New York) joins the show to talk about why she decided to open up a company dedicated to the sweetness of Mexico.
Maite's Recipes:
Tequila Ice Cream (Yummy with Mezcal, too!)
Acocado Coconut Sorbet
Hibiscus Lime Granita
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
For centuries around the world, ice cream was a divine
treat only fit for the royals. Why ice Before the
nineteenth century, ice was hard to come by and even
harder to keep frozen. Today's episode is all about ice cream.
(00:20):
My name is Eva Longoria and I am Mike Dean
and welcome to Hungry for History, a podcast that explores
our past and present through food. On every episode, we'll
talk about the history of some of our favorite dishes, ingredients,
and beverages. So make yourself at home. Echel I'm so
(00:44):
excited about today because I love ice cream, and now
that I'm lactose intolerant, I'm very sad that I have
to curate my ice cream accordingly. That is try magic.
I'm so excited that you love ice cream because I
wasn't sure because you're not a big sweet person. I'm
(01:06):
an ice cream junkie. But are we talking about ice cream?
Are we talking about like the umbrella of ice cream?
Because like the sorbets, the gelato, the raspas, the snow
coat was that, that's what we're talking about. We're talking
about the umbrella because there's just too much good not
to talk about it. There's so much because yeah, if
you think about like ice cream. When I was pregnant,
(01:27):
I got into making ice cream, and so I got
an ice cream machine and I made vanilla bean with
the Mexican vanilla beans. I made sorbets, mango, lemon, pear, lime, mandarin,
I mean, you name it. I made it when I
was pregnant, and everybody would come over and go, this
is amazing. I'm like, isn't it amazing? And then I
bought all these books about ice cream and recipes. There's
(01:50):
a beautiful book called The Perfect Scoop and it has
like French ice cream, which has more dairy, and then
there's American ice cream, which is different. And I mean
it was all these different recipes and I was like,
I had no idea. It's so complex. Yeah, it's so complex.
And you think ice cream ice cream, Well, let's get
(02:13):
into the history of this, because people have been enjoying
ice cream for a very long time, absolutely, like a
very very, very very very long time. The history of
ice cream is ancient, ancient, ancient, So where did it
come from? Like, who how did it start so long ago?
If there was no ice, well there was ice, there
(02:35):
was no ice cream makers. But where there's snow, there
is ice, and there's ice cream. Okay, right, So it
has been basically ice cream has been a luxury item
for thousands of years, and it was this this sort
of luxury treat that was only fit for royals because
(02:57):
they needed to get ice. So there is in the
fourth century BC, Alexander the Great, he loved to indulge
in icy drinks flavored with honey or wine. In the
first century, ice was harvested from nearby mountains and held
in ice houses that were these sort of deep pits
(03:18):
covered with straw. So this is something that people would
do basically put snow in pits up until the nineteenth century,
so up until not that long ago. And when did
sugar get added? Well, sugar was added by the Italians,
of course it was I mean the Italians were really
(03:39):
took ice cream to a whole you know, other level.
But even during the Middle Ages, the Arabs drank this
icy rish freshman called sherbet, flavored with cherry or pomegranate
or quint so it was sweet but with fruit, not
necessarily with the addition of sugar. But the first time
that we see sugar added to this sort of Surbet
(04:04):
was in seventeenth century Italy. This man named Antonio Latini.
He lived in Naples. He worked for the Spanish viceroy
in Naples. And this is when this part of southern
Italy was part of Spain. So we could really credit
the Italians for taking ice cream to a whole, you know,
new level. This Sicilian named Francesco Procopio, he opened the
(04:39):
first cafe in Paris called Il brocop and it's still around.
This was in sixteen eighty six, and this cafe became
the meeting place for intellectuals including Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon
and Victor Hugo. And so he introduced gelato to the
French public and it was served in these little, poor
(05:00):
slim bowls resembling a little egg cups. And Procopio became
known as the father of Italian gelato. This is before
freezers like you, it was. It was. It was something
that was quite quite expensive. Gelato has a I don't
like the texture of gelato. It has a gelatiness to it. Huh.
(05:21):
It's a different texture than ice cream for sure. So gelato,
it was actually invented, even before they say that it
was invented by a stage designer named Bernardo Bonatali who
made ice cream for the Medici Court in Florence. He's
kind of never making a gelato, but you know, this
guy Procopio made it, you know, brought it to France.
(05:42):
But it's made with it's less creamy. It's made with
milk rather than cream, and it has a low or
percentage of milk fat than ice cream, so it's a
little smoother and silkier, whereas ice cream has more fat.
It has egg yolks, so it's a little it's a
little thicker than the gage. Yeah. The French were also
(06:05):
experimenting with frozen desserts called fromage, but not fromage. You
didn't have cheese. It was just called fromage partly because
of that's probably because a little molds that they were
that it was actually you know, placed in I've never
had it. I wonder if you could still find this
frozen fromage. It's so interesting because as you describe how
(06:26):
the French experimented with the fromage the frozen dessert, the
process that they describe, which is stirring it during the
freezing process is the same as as as a granita. Yeah,
and it's also the similar to raspa. Yeah right, you
don't have anice machine, yeah yeah. You just put it
in the freezer and then you just take a four
(06:46):
the times of a fork and raspad which is scrape,
and then you create this sort of like a snow cone,
basically a raspa. So that's similar to the to the granita.
Speaking of raspas, which is super Mexican, I say raspas,
you say rasp in um. When we were in Vera Cruz,
it was called something else, raspato. I had never heard
(07:08):
that before. Yeah, different places, different I grew up calling
it ras And that's because it's snow coast scrape back
block of ice. And it's usually served in a coup,
like in a plastic cup from the street with like
sugar syrup, you know, pour it on top of a cone.
It's in a in a plastic cone. Oh I've never
had it in a cone. I always have it in
(07:29):
a cup. Oh, I mean a snow cone. Like at
a carnival. They put it in a cone. Yes, like
a cone. Cop Stay with us more on the history
of ice cream right after the break. So what about
(07:51):
what about ice cream and Mexico nive. Pre Hispanic niven
never means snow. Niv yeah, Spanish word for snow. I
always grew up called ice cream nieve. Whether it's water
based or not, it's for me, it's naev. It's all nieve.
But Mexico has a very important and ancient tradition of
(08:12):
eating ice cream. So in Prehispanic Mexico, pikas which were
these elite, long distant traders that cover these vast networks
of routes connecting the Aztec Empire. They were responsible for
obtaining snow from the volcanoes that are surrounding modern day
(08:34):
Mexico City in a two day process. So they would
swiftly hike up the volcanoes packed snow and these leather
satchels that were wrapped with agave fibers in order to
keep to keep the snow from from melting before it
reaches final destination. And the snow was sold in luxury
markets of Platelco, which was the luxury market in modern
(08:58):
day Mexico City. But the job of flavoring the snow
fell to a select group of priests who added ingredients
like honey or agave nectar or fresh fruits like prickly pear,
sometimes a little bit of corn, and the finished product
was symbolically offered to the gods before being sold in
(09:21):
the markets at a premium. We talked about this a
little bit in our chocolate episode that cacao beans were
used as currency. So the cost of one cup of
ice cream would cost twenty cacao beans. So this is
very expensive considering the cost. You could buy a rabbit
that could feed you know, a bunch of people would
(09:42):
cost thirty cacao beans, so twenty would buy this luxurious
cup of nie. Where does where does Tamarin come from Mexico? Right,
Thamarin comes from Mexico, botha Mario, Linamica. They all made
their way to Mexico post conquest from the Caribbean or Africa. Well,
there are different, you know theories. Tamarindo's native to South Asia,
(10:05):
but it could have it's South Asians, so you see
a lot of Indian you know, cuisine. So it could
have made its way from Asia to the Philippines and
then into Mexico on the Manella galleons. Or maybe it
had already made its way to Africa, you know, pre
colonial Mexico. So maybe it made its way to Mexico
(10:26):
via Africa. I associate Tamarindo with Mexico, like it's so Mexican.
And so it was during this colonial period that the
ingredients were like uh made intergral to the to the
ice cream, I mean into into Mexican cuisine in general,
but like damarindo, lime, hibiscus, sugar, um. You know, it
all became part of the history of ice cream in Mexico.
(10:48):
And all of these local fruits. I mean, Mexico has
amazing local fruits. And when those local fruits met gelato
recipes by the Italian immigrants, I mean, so many artisanal
ice creams and sorbets were born during the colonial period
and they were like churned by hand, um in salt
filled wooden barrels. That's so funny, Like they were churned
(11:12):
in wooden barrels. Yeah, you've seen these, probably when you're
driving in Mexico because you see them in a lot
of the you know, the streets. I you know, when
I went to Totacruz, I had ice cream when I
meant to meet you and Dacrus, I have an ice
cream everywhere I got. I'm obsessed with ice cream. But
on the roads. On the side of the roads. In Mexico,
they have these neighbors rafa. So it's these these wooden
(11:33):
barrels with a metal cylinder on the inside, and in
between the cylinder and the barrel they put the ice
and salt and so you turn by hand and it
freezes the the ice cream, but not like a solid
block like but it makes these delicious, you know, water
based ice creams, basically like sorbetsum with these fruit. I
(11:57):
was in Mexico City a couple of weeks ago and
I adnavana, which is like the sour sup Oh my god,
it was so delicious and it was made like that
and sold and this little cup. My mouth is watering
just thinking about. Yeah. Well, the Maluccon and Veracruz has
a very rich history of ice cream vendors. It's because
(12:17):
that was the port. So you had the Italian everywhere,
and so you had French people, you had you know,
all the Europeans, all the Caribbeans, so that Benacruz for sure,
and then also like Goyacan and Socimilco they had there's
like ice cream festival, so they have this amazing you
know tradition of ice cream butletice mata also this sort
(12:38):
of burnt milk m So it's interesting. Like just the
differences between Mexican ice cream and American ones is that,
you know, Mexican ice creams are more fruit is front
and center, right, whereas American ice creams are more you know, chunky,
right like Ben and Jerry's with like chunks of brownie
or cookies and cream which is my favorite, with trunks
(13:00):
of oreos um. You don't really see that in Mexico. No, No,
like Mexican ice creams closer to the gelato or less flat,
less fat less air very few or egg based, and
fruit is always front and center, like for sure, front
and center. And that's why I think balletas and snow
cones are way more popular in Mexico than ice cream
(13:21):
per se. Yeah, I think they're both. I mean, I
think maybe the ice cream. Depending on where you are
in Mexico, there is a big sort of ice cream,
you know, traditional let Goyacan. In Mexico City, there's tons
of ice cream vendors all over. I was in the
Chacon a few months ago also, like ice cream was everywhere,
but different than the ice cream shops that we see here.
(13:43):
Like going to like basket Robins or Jennies or whatever.
They're more sort of outside, yeah, like a little like
a little vendors that have an ice cream and then
separately the balletas and separately the last bus. So then
(14:08):
speaking of raspas, that brings us to the Americas. So
when did ice cream reach the America's obviously with colonization,
with colonized like everything else, like everything else. European settlers
in the early seventeen hundreds, and they brought their European
cookbooks with them and they start you start seeing ice
cream molds that are super cool. I've been looking. I
always go off and go like on eBay or et
(14:31):
C to see if I could find these old ice
cream molds. So they would basically put them in there
to shape these ice cream and they had like fruit
shapes or little animal shapes, and it became, you know,
very popular among the upper classes. But the first ice
cream parlor opened in New York in seventeen ninety, and
everybody was like George Washington during the summer of seventeen ninety,
(14:54):
George Washington was a fan. Thomas Jefferson was a fan
a Graham Lincoln's wife was a fan of ice cream.
She would she would hold strawberry parties, serving ripe strawberries
with cake and ice cream like this, I want to
go to that. This was like a you know that
sounds like a fun party. So it was pretty popular
(15:18):
in the seventeen Yeah, the seventeen nineties, that's the era. Yeah,
the first, the earliest recipe for ice cream in the US.
He's actually written in Thomas Jefferson's hand. Wow. So cool.
He brought this recipe back to the US from Paris
he lived in He lived in Paris for four years
before the French Revolution, and when he came back, he
brought back eighty six crates of kitchen equipment, including an
(15:43):
ice cream maker, and there was a recipe earliest recipe
for vanilla ice cream. Yeah, and a relative of his.
I have this cook of the Virginia Housewife. This is
from eighteen twenty four by Mary Randolph, who was related
to him by by mary marriage. She includes twenty different
recipes for ice cream in this cookbook. And this is
(16:05):
eighteen twenty four, so this is very very early on. Yeah,
but it was like up and running, I mean it was.
It was a thing by eighteen twenty four, ice cream
was a thing. You know what's so funny is that
how much ice cream we consume in America. That nine
percent of American cow's milk production is dedicated to ice cream,
and that vanilla is the most popular flavor. It's my
(16:29):
favorite flavor. Don't go anywhere. When we come back, we've
got more on the history of ice cream. Welcome back
(16:49):
to Hungry for History. Fanny Gerson is the chef and
founder of Lanu Jurquina, and New York based frozen treats
and baked goods shop dedicated to celebrating this sweets of Mexico.
Here is Fanny telling us a bit about herself, sharing
what inspired her to open her business, and giving us
her thoughts on what makes Mexican flavors so unique. My
(17:18):
name is Fanny Gerson. I was born and raised in
Mexico City, and Lani Yorkina is a company that I
started in two thousand and ten. I had spent the
year prior to that doing research for my first cookbook,
called My Sweet Mexico. Really that experience changed me, so
(17:39):
one day I literally had a dream that I was
going to open a Mexican ice cream shop. In New
York and that's how Lan Yorkina was born. And I
decided to start with paltas Mexican style ice pops because
I thought, you know, this is a way to test
the idea without you know, costing much less than I
didn't have to buy a machine. And also I didn't
(18:01):
see anybody really making baltas in New York. And that's
how it started. And now Lemi Yorquina. We are still
known mainly for frozen treats for our Balta's ice cream,
but we also do all sorts of treats, sweets, candies, confections, cakes,
to ross all kinds of stuff. So to me, the
(18:27):
sweetness of Mexico encompasses a lot of things, like not
just literally sweet, you know, because everything that we do
is say is sweet, but really highlighting our culture in
a beautiful, delicious, positive and rich way. You know. Mexican
food often get sort of put together as this lump thing,
(18:48):
like there's one thing, you know, and there's a lot
of assumptions about it. But Mexican food is incredibly rich,
very regional, and there's been a lot of things written
and researched about the cuisine as a whole, but not
a whole lot specifically on sweets. So I wanted to
it was out of my own curiosity. So it's really
celebrating that. And for the most part, also a lot
(19:09):
of the traditions in Mexico, particularly the sweets, are oral ones,
meaning they're passed down from generation to generation. So for me,
it's a celebration that it's rooted in tradition and just
giving it continuity. I think that one of the most
(19:31):
interesting things about Mexican ice cream is if you think
about ice cream and jelato, Like in different parts of
the world, if you go to a shop or a stand,
you're going to see mostly cream based or milk based selections,
you know, ice creams and the sorbet. You may have
like one or two trickle. You know, they're sort of
like as a thing, but in Mexico it's the opposite.
(19:52):
You often see like more fruit based ones or at
least half, and they're just so bright and colorful, and
also it's it's they are so amazing. They really are.
Like the flavors that we have, they're very sort of
in your face, like a lot of you know, Mexican flavors,
and they're playful, and that's the other thing I just
(20:13):
want to mention, like Mexican food in particularly the sweets
are very playful and joyful, and I think that that
makes them particularly special and that I hope when people
come to New York they can get a taste of lamarquina.
Although if you do live in the US, we ship nationwide,
so that's that's pretty cool. What's your favorite flavor of
(20:40):
ice cream? Well, I love vanilla ice cream. It's what
I always have in my freezer. But my favorite is
cookies and cream. Okay, yeah, I don't like cookies and cream.
I don't like mint. I don't know why people put
mint and chocolate together. That does not make sense. I
don't like those Girl Scout cookies that have mint and chocolate.
I don't like thin mints. I don't like mint chocolate.
(21:00):
Why who put those two things together? Makes me very angry. Um.
According to the International Dairy Foods Association in twenty twenty one,
Americans eat roughly twenty pounds of ice cream each year,
so that's about four gallons per person. So this is like,
it's a lot of ice cream. That's a lot of
ice cream. This is why I don't have cookies and
cream in my freezer because I would eat four gallons probably,
(21:23):
And yeah, if it's if it's in the freezer, it
will be eaten Dairy Queen, which is my favorite, probably
my favorite ice cream. Oh my god, you're not glad
you brought up Derek Queen. Okay, got Dairy Queen. Is
there's nothing better? I was. I made a big note
on my notes the soft syrup dipped in chocolate dip
(21:46):
cone and and the dilly bar, which is the dilly bar.
The dilly bar is basically the same thing. It's on
a stick. It's basically the soft serve and dipped, but
it's on a stick. Um, so it has the hard
shell chocolate. And so anyway, I love dairy I mean
that's the ice cream I grew up with. That was
like the fancy if we were going to splurge that
(22:06):
we would go to Dairy Queen. Yeah, growing up it
was Dairy Queen. And every time I go to Texas,
I have to go to Dairy Queen. It's a road
trip stop. Like every single time. It's the cone, the
curly with the chocolate and you have to eat it
really quickly because it's mouths. I also, if we didn't
go to Dairy Queen, it was the ice cream man,
it was the ice cream truck. We didn't really do
(22:28):
the have the ice I don't have a memory of
an ice cream No, I don't really have memory of
an ice cream truck growing up. Dairy Queen one percent,
because there was one very close to my house. Um.
And then also we would we would actually go across
No Laredo and by there was a place there called Larrechia,
and we always bought. We always had it. Our freezer
(22:50):
always had lime. But I don't really remember the ice
cream truck growing Okay, See, you and I grew up
so different and so similar because I didn't grow up
with baltas. We didn't have them in Corpus Christi. Um,
and I really didn't get into balas you call them, right,
which is like popsicles, yeah, but fruiting. No, They're like, no,
(23:14):
they're popsicles on steroids. Because these the combination flavors that
Mexicans do with these popsicles, like the Ta Marino mangol,
you know, the coconut with chile or whatever. Like they're
just amazing combinations. And I never really had them until
I married Bippe and they're everywhere obviously in Mexico. In
Mexico City, yeah, I didn't grow up with balata and
(23:35):
I was like, what is this? And because I'm black,
those in Dollar Now they're my new favorite thing. Oh
my god. Yeah. And we grew up even in Laredo
with a little especially downtown Laredo that's cool, closer to
the bridge, the palate, the little you know, the guy
with a little cart and had these water based you know,
Mario with my guy and all of these like amazing flavors.
(23:58):
So yeah, it's interesting that And I always have in
my freezer. I always have Valta's, always have, always, always,
and there's always have line Valetta's Mango. I make them.
Also there's this brand that's like a yes, they have
I know that they're the best. They have them. They
(24:19):
sell palates at grocery stores. I buy them, you know,
at the grocery stores here in La It's like a
hot pink box. And they make the best pecan Valtas.
They're incredible. So I always have Falitas and I always
have ice cream in my freezer always. Thank you so
much for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe. Thank you
(24:40):
so much. Tell all your friends about Hungry for History.
Hungry for History is an unbelievable entertainment production in partnership
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you get your podcast
For centuries around the world, ice cream was a divine
treat only fit for the royals. Why ice Before the
nineteenth century, ice was hard to come by and even
harder to keep frozen. Today's episode is all about ice cream.
(00:20):
My name is Eva Longoria and I am Mike Dean
and welcome to Hungry for History, a podcast that explores
our past and present through food. On every episode, we'll
talk about the history of some of our favorite dishes, ingredients,
and beverages. So make yourself at home. Echel I'm so
(00:44):
excited about today because I love ice cream, and now
that I'm lactose intolerant, I'm very sad that I have
to curate my ice cream accordingly. That is try magic.
I'm so excited that you love ice cream because I
wasn't sure because you're not a big sweet person. I'm
(01:06):
an ice cream junkie. But are we talking about ice cream?
Are we talking about like the umbrella of ice cream?
Because like the sorbets, the gelato, the raspas, the snow
coat was that, that's what we're talking about. We're talking
about the umbrella because there's just too much good not
to talk about it. There's so much because yeah, if
you think about like ice cream. When I was pregnant,
(01:27):
I got into making ice cream, and so I got
an ice cream machine and I made vanilla bean with
the Mexican vanilla beans. I made sorbets, mango, lemon, pear, lime, mandarin,
I mean, you name it. I made it when I
was pregnant, and everybody would come over and go, this
is amazing. I'm like, isn't it amazing? And then I
bought all these books about ice cream and recipes. There's
(01:50):
a beautiful book called The Perfect Scoop and it has
like French ice cream, which has more dairy, and then
there's American ice cream, which is different. And I mean
it was all these different recipes and I was like,
I had no idea. It's so complex. Yeah, it's so complex.
And you think ice cream ice cream, Well, let's get
(02:13):
into the history of this, because people have been enjoying
ice cream for a very long time, absolutely, like a
very very, very very very long time. The history of
ice cream is ancient, ancient, ancient, So where did it
come from? Like, who how did it start so long ago?
If there was no ice, well there was ice, there
(02:35):
was no ice cream makers. But where there's snow, there
is ice, and there's ice cream. Okay, right, So it
has been basically ice cream has been a luxury item
for thousands of years, and it was this this sort
of luxury treat that was only fit for royals because
(02:57):
they needed to get ice. So there is in the
fourth century BC, Alexander the Great, he loved to indulge
in icy drinks flavored with honey or wine. In the
first century, ice was harvested from nearby mountains and held
in ice houses that were these sort of deep pits
(03:18):
covered with straw. So this is something that people would
do basically put snow in pits up until the nineteenth century,
so up until not that long ago. And when did
sugar get added? Well, sugar was added by the Italians,
of course it was I mean the Italians were really
(03:39):
took ice cream to a whole you know, other level.
But even during the Middle Ages, the Arabs drank this
icy rish freshman called sherbet, flavored with cherry or pomegranate
or quint so it was sweet but with fruit, not
necessarily with the addition of sugar. But the first time
that we see sugar added to this sort of Surbet
(04:04):
was in seventeenth century Italy. This man named Antonio Latini.
He lived in Naples. He worked for the Spanish viceroy
in Naples. And this is when this part of southern
Italy was part of Spain. So we could really credit
the Italians for taking ice cream to a whole, you know,
new level. This Sicilian named Francesco Procopio, he opened the
(04:39):
first cafe in Paris called Il brocop and it's still around.
This was in sixteen eighty six, and this cafe became
the meeting place for intellectuals including Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon
and Victor Hugo. And so he introduced gelato to the
French public and it was served in these little, poor
(05:00):
slim bowls resembling a little egg cups. And Procopio became
known as the father of Italian gelato. This is before
freezers like you, it was. It was. It was something
that was quite quite expensive. Gelato has a I don't
like the texture of gelato. It has a gelatiness to it. Huh.
(05:21):
It's a different texture than ice cream for sure. So gelato,
it was actually invented, even before they say that it
was invented by a stage designer named Bernardo Bonatali who
made ice cream for the Medici Court in Florence. He's
kind of never making a gelato, but you know, this
guy Procopio made it, you know, brought it to France.
(05:42):
But it's made with it's less creamy. It's made with
milk rather than cream, and it has a low or
percentage of milk fat than ice cream, so it's a
little smoother and silkier, whereas ice cream has more fat.
It has egg yolks, so it's a little it's a
little thicker than the gage. Yeah. The French were also
(06:05):
experimenting with frozen desserts called fromage, but not fromage. You
didn't have cheese. It was just called fromage partly because
of that's probably because a little molds that they were
that it was actually you know, placed in I've never
had it. I wonder if you could still find this
frozen fromage. It's so interesting because as you describe how
(06:26):
the French experimented with the fromage the frozen dessert, the
process that they describe, which is stirring it during the
freezing process is the same as as as a granita. Yeah,
and it's also the similar to raspa. Yeah right, you
don't have anice machine, yeah yeah. You just put it
in the freezer and then you just take a four
(06:46):
the times of a fork and raspad which is scrape,
and then you create this sort of like a snow cone,
basically a raspa. So that's similar to the to the granita.
Speaking of raspas, which is super Mexican, I say raspas,
you say rasp in um. When we were in Vera Cruz,
it was called something else, raspato. I had never heard
(07:08):
that before. Yeah, different places, different I grew up calling
it ras And that's because it's snow coast scrape back
block of ice. And it's usually served in a coup,
like in a plastic cup from the street with like
sugar syrup, you know, pour it on top of a cone.
It's in a in a plastic cone. Oh I've never
had it in a cone. I always have it in
(07:29):
a cup. Oh, I mean a snow cone. Like at
a carnival. They put it in a cone. Yes, like
a cone. Cop Stay with us more on the history
of ice cream right after the break. So what about
(07:51):
what about ice cream and Mexico nive. Pre Hispanic niven
never means snow. Niv yeah, Spanish word for snow. I
always grew up called ice cream nieve. Whether it's water
based or not, it's for me, it's naev. It's all nieve.
But Mexico has a very important and ancient tradition of
(08:12):
eating ice cream. So in Prehispanic Mexico, pikas which were
these elite, long distant traders that cover these vast networks
of routes connecting the Aztec Empire. They were responsible for
obtaining snow from the volcanoes that are surrounding modern day
(08:34):
Mexico City in a two day process. So they would
swiftly hike up the volcanoes packed snow and these leather
satchels that were wrapped with agave fibers in order to
keep to keep the snow from from melting before it
reaches final destination. And the snow was sold in luxury
markets of Platelco, which was the luxury market in modern
(08:58):
day Mexico City. But the job of flavoring the snow
fell to a select group of priests who added ingredients
like honey or agave nectar or fresh fruits like prickly pear,
sometimes a little bit of corn, and the finished product
was symbolically offered to the gods before being sold in
(09:21):
the markets at a premium. We talked about this a
little bit in our chocolate episode that cacao beans were
used as currency. So the cost of one cup of
ice cream would cost twenty cacao beans. So this is
very expensive considering the cost. You could buy a rabbit
that could feed you know, a bunch of people would
(09:42):
cost thirty cacao beans, so twenty would buy this luxurious
cup of nie. Where does where does Tamarin come from Mexico? Right,
Thamarin comes from Mexico, botha Mario, Linamica. They all made
their way to Mexico post conquest from the Caribbean or Africa. Well,
there are different, you know theories. Tamarindo's native to South Asia,
(10:05):
but it could have it's South Asians, so you see
a lot of Indian you know, cuisine. So it could
have made its way from Asia to the Philippines and
then into Mexico on the Manella galleons. Or maybe it
had already made its way to Africa, you know, pre
colonial Mexico. So maybe it made its way to Mexico
(10:26):
via Africa. I associate Tamarindo with Mexico, like it's so Mexican.
And so it was during this colonial period that the
ingredients were like uh made intergral to the to the
ice cream, I mean into into Mexican cuisine in general,
but like damarindo, lime, hibiscus, sugar, um. You know, it
all became part of the history of ice cream in Mexico.
(10:48):
And all of these local fruits. I mean, Mexico has
amazing local fruits. And when those local fruits met gelato
recipes by the Italian immigrants, I mean, so many artisanal
ice creams and sorbets were born during the colonial period
and they were like churned by hand, um in salt
filled wooden barrels. That's so funny, Like they were churned
(11:12):
in wooden barrels. Yeah, you've seen these, probably when you're
driving in Mexico because you see them in a lot
of the you know, the streets. I you know, when
I went to Totacruz, I had ice cream when I
meant to meet you and Dacrus, I have an ice
cream everywhere I got. I'm obsessed with ice cream. But
on the roads. On the side of the roads. In Mexico,
they have these neighbors rafa. So it's these these wooden
(11:33):
barrels with a metal cylinder on the inside, and in
between the cylinder and the barrel they put the ice
and salt and so you turn by hand and it
freezes the the ice cream, but not like a solid
block like but it makes these delicious, you know, water
based ice creams, basically like sorbetsum with these fruit. I
(11:57):
was in Mexico City a couple of weeks ago and
I adnavana, which is like the sour sup Oh my god,
it was so delicious and it was made like that
and sold and this little cup. My mouth is watering
just thinking about. Yeah. Well, the Maluccon and Veracruz has
a very rich history of ice cream vendors. It's because
(12:17):
that was the port. So you had the Italian everywhere,
and so you had French people, you had you know,
all the Europeans, all the Caribbeans, so that Benacruz for sure,
and then also like Goyacan and Socimilco they had there's
like ice cream festival, so they have this amazing you
know tradition of ice cream butletice mata also this sort
(12:38):
of burnt milk m So it's interesting. Like just the
differences between Mexican ice cream and American ones is that,
you know, Mexican ice creams are more fruit is front
and center, right, whereas American ice creams are more you know, chunky,
right like Ben and Jerry's with like chunks of brownie
or cookies and cream which is my favorite, with trunks
(13:00):
of oreos um. You don't really see that in Mexico. No, No,
like Mexican ice creams closer to the gelato or less flat,
less fat less air very few or egg based, and
fruit is always front and center, like for sure, front
and center. And that's why I think balletas and snow
cones are way more popular in Mexico than ice cream
(13:21):
per se. Yeah, I think they're both. I mean, I
think maybe the ice cream. Depending on where you are
in Mexico, there is a big sort of ice cream,
you know, traditional let Goyacan. In Mexico City, there's tons
of ice cream vendors all over. I was in the
Chacon a few months ago also, like ice cream was everywhere,
but different than the ice cream shops that we see here.
(13:43):
Like going to like basket Robins or Jennies or whatever.
They're more sort of outside, yeah, like a little like
a little vendors that have an ice cream and then
separately the balletas and separately the last bus. So then
(14:08):
speaking of raspas, that brings us to the Americas. So
when did ice cream reach the America's obviously with colonization,
with colonized like everything else, like everything else. European settlers
in the early seventeen hundreds, and they brought their European
cookbooks with them and they start you start seeing ice
cream molds that are super cool. I've been looking. I
always go off and go like on eBay or et
(14:31):
C to see if I could find these old ice
cream molds. So they would basically put them in there
to shape these ice cream and they had like fruit
shapes or little animal shapes, and it became, you know,
very popular among the upper classes. But the first ice
cream parlor opened in New York in seventeen ninety, and
everybody was like George Washington during the summer of seventeen ninety,
(14:54):
George Washington was a fan. Thomas Jefferson was a fan
a Graham Lincoln's wife was a fan of ice cream.
She would she would hold strawberry parties, serving ripe strawberries
with cake and ice cream like this, I want to
go to that. This was like a you know that
sounds like a fun party. So it was pretty popular
(15:18):
in the seventeen Yeah, the seventeen nineties, that's the era. Yeah,
the first, the earliest recipe for ice cream in the US.
He's actually written in Thomas Jefferson's hand. Wow. So cool.
He brought this recipe back to the US from Paris
he lived in He lived in Paris for four years
before the French Revolution, and when he came back, he
brought back eighty six crates of kitchen equipment, including an
(15:43):
ice cream maker, and there was a recipe earliest recipe
for vanilla ice cream. Yeah, and a relative of his.
I have this cook of the Virginia Housewife. This is
from eighteen twenty four by Mary Randolph, who was related
to him by by mary marriage. She includes twenty different
recipes for ice cream in this cookbook. And this is
(16:05):
eighteen twenty four, so this is very very early on. Yeah,
but it was like up and running, I mean it was.
It was a thing by eighteen twenty four, ice cream
was a thing. You know what's so funny is that
how much ice cream we consume in America. That nine
percent of American cow's milk production is dedicated to ice cream,
and that vanilla is the most popular flavor. It's my
(16:29):
favorite flavor. Don't go anywhere. When we come back, we've
got more on the history of ice cream. Welcome back
(16:49):
to Hungry for History. Fanny Gerson is the chef and
founder of Lanu Jurquina, and New York based frozen treats
and baked goods shop dedicated to celebrating this sweets of Mexico.
Here is Fanny telling us a bit about herself, sharing
what inspired her to open her business, and giving us
her thoughts on what makes Mexican flavors so unique. My
(17:18):
name is Fanny Gerson. I was born and raised in
Mexico City, and Lani Yorkina is a company that I
started in two thousand and ten. I had spent the
year prior to that doing research for my first cookbook,
called My Sweet Mexico. Really that experience changed me, so
(17:39):
one day I literally had a dream that I was
going to open a Mexican ice cream shop. In New
York and that's how Lan Yorkina was born. And I
decided to start with paltas Mexican style ice pops because
I thought, you know, this is a way to test
the idea without you know, costing much less than I
didn't have to buy a machine. And also I didn't
(18:01):
see anybody really making baltas in New York. And that's
how it started. And now Lemi Yorquina. We are still
known mainly for frozen treats for our Balta's ice cream,
but we also do all sorts of treats, sweets, candies, confections, cakes,
to ross all kinds of stuff. So to me, the
(18:27):
sweetness of Mexico encompasses a lot of things, like not
just literally sweet, you know, because everything that we do
is say is sweet, but really highlighting our culture in
a beautiful, delicious, positive and rich way. You know. Mexican
food often get sort of put together as this lump thing,
(18:48):
like there's one thing, you know, and there's a lot
of assumptions about it. But Mexican food is incredibly rich,
very regional, and there's been a lot of things written
and researched about the cuisine as a whole, but not
a whole lot specifically on sweets. So I wanted to
it was out of my own curiosity. So it's really
celebrating that. And for the most part, also a lot
(19:09):
of the traditions in Mexico, particularly the sweets, are oral ones,
meaning they're passed down from generation to generation. So for me,
it's a celebration that it's rooted in tradition and just
giving it continuity. I think that one of the most
(19:31):
interesting things about Mexican ice cream is if you think
about ice cream and jelato, Like in different parts of
the world, if you go to a shop or a stand,
you're going to see mostly cream based or milk based selections,
you know, ice creams and the sorbet. You may have
like one or two trickle. You know, they're sort of
like as a thing, but in Mexico it's the opposite.
(19:52):
You often see like more fruit based ones or at
least half, and they're just so bright and colorful, and
also it's it's they are so amazing. They really are.
Like the flavors that we have, they're very sort of
in your face, like a lot of you know, Mexican flavors,
and they're playful, and that's the other thing I just
(20:13):
want to mention, like Mexican food in particularly the sweets
are very playful and joyful, and I think that that
makes them particularly special and that I hope when people
come to New York they can get a taste of lamarquina.
Although if you do live in the US, we ship nationwide,
so that's that's pretty cool. What's your favorite flavor of
(20:40):
ice cream? Well, I love vanilla ice cream. It's what
I always have in my freezer. But my favorite is
cookies and cream. Okay, yeah, I don't like cookies and cream.
I don't like mint. I don't know why people put
mint and chocolate together. That does not make sense. I
don't like those Girl Scout cookies that have mint and chocolate.
I don't like thin mints. I don't like mint chocolate.
(21:00):
Why who put those two things together? Makes me very angry. Um.
According to the International Dairy Foods Association in twenty twenty one,
Americans eat roughly twenty pounds of ice cream each year,
so that's about four gallons per person. So this is like,
it's a lot of ice cream. That's a lot of
ice cream. This is why I don't have cookies and
cream in my freezer because I would eat four gallons probably,
(21:23):
And yeah, if it's if it's in the freezer, it
will be eaten Dairy Queen, which is my favorite, probably
my favorite ice cream. Oh my god, you're not glad
you brought up Derek Queen. Okay, got Dairy Queen. Is
there's nothing better? I was. I made a big note
on my notes the soft syrup dipped in chocolate dip
(21:46):
cone and and the dilly bar, which is the dilly bar.
The dilly bar is basically the same thing. It's on
a stick. It's basically the soft serve and dipped, but
it's on a stick. Um, so it has the hard
shell chocolate. And so anyway, I love dairy I mean
that's the ice cream I grew up with. That was
like the fancy if we were going to splurge that
(22:06):
we would go to Dairy Queen. Yeah, growing up it
was Dairy Queen. And every time I go to Texas,
I have to go to Dairy Queen. It's a road
trip stop. Like every single time. It's the cone, the
curly with the chocolate and you have to eat it
really quickly because it's mouths. I also, if we didn't
go to Dairy Queen, it was the ice cream man,
it was the ice cream truck. We didn't really do
(22:28):
the have the ice I don't have a memory of
an ice cream No, I don't really have memory of
an ice cream truck growing up. Dairy Queen one percent,
because there was one very close to my house. Um.
And then also we would we would actually go across
No Laredo and by there was a place there called Larrechia,
and we always bought. We always had it. Our freezer
(22:50):
always had lime. But I don't really remember the ice
cream truck growing Okay, See, you and I grew up
so different and so similar because I didn't grow up
with baltas. We didn't have them in Corpus Christi. Um,
and I really didn't get into balas you call them, right,
which is like popsicles, yeah, but fruiting. No, They're like, no,
(23:14):
they're popsicles on steroids. Because these the combination flavors that
Mexicans do with these popsicles, like the Ta Marino mangol,
you know, the coconut with chile or whatever. Like they're
just amazing combinations. And I never really had them until
I married Bippe and they're everywhere obviously in Mexico. In
Mexico City, yeah, I didn't grow up with balata and
(23:35):
I was like, what is this? And because I'm black,
those in Dollar Now they're my new favorite thing. Oh
my god. Yeah. And we grew up even in Laredo
with a little especially downtown Laredo that's cool, closer to
the bridge, the palate, the little you know, the guy
with a little cart and had these water based you know,
Mario with my guy and all of these like amazing flavors.
(23:58):
So yeah, it's interesting that And I always have in
my freezer. I always have Valta's, always have, always, always,
and there's always have line Valetta's Mango. I make them.
Also there's this brand that's like a yes, they have
I know that they're the best. They have them. They
(24:19):
sell palates at grocery stores. I buy them, you know,
at the grocery stores here in La It's like a
hot pink box. And they make the best pecan Valtas.
They're incredible. So I always have Falitas and I always
have ice cream in my freezer always. Thank you so
much for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe. Thank you
(24:40):
so much. Tell all your friends about Hungry for History.
Hungry for History is an unbelievable entertainment production in partnership
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