May 10, 2025 • 42 mins
We all scream for ice cream, sure, but did you know we're all technically screaming about a colloidal foam? As you hit play on this classic episode, prepare for deep cravings that will surely emerge as you learn the history of ice cream, how to make it yourself and lots more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ice Screamer, The You screama, Oh we all scream a
for how ice cream works. The great episode celebrating the
best dessert treat in all honesty. I mean, it's just
nothing better than ice cream. This is from February fifth,
twenty fifteen. I don't eat ice cream much anymore because
it disagrees with my body. But boy, every now and
(00:21):
then I get one of those pints gl chubby ubby
if you can find it, though it done your throat
and suffer the consequences. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's
Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry. So this is
Stuff you Should Know. The Dreaming of Summer in the
Middle of Winter edition.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Oh my friend, ice cream is a year round treat
for me.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yeah, sure, I know. I have.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Oh yeah, what you have? We're gonna buzz markt a lot, probably.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Rocky Road and Vividly Vanilla.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
What brand is it?
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Oh? Yeah, yeah, they're delicious. Nice.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yeah? Was it heavier? Light?
Speaker 2 (01:11):
It was light?
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yeah. After reading this, I was like, man, this is
very light.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
A lot of air in there.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I taught myself to juggle with them.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Oh, well that's exciting.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
That was a cross reference.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yeah, I'm I'm Ben and Jerry's guy.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Well, yeah, it's great stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yeah. I can't have too much of it though, because
I got the lactose issues.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Really. Yeah, and ice cream is your favorite treat.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah, it's pretty sad.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
That's self, that's self hate.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Yeah, ice cream followed by a large glass of milk
right now, just kidding.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Then you just inject a bunch of casins directly into
your neck.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Yeah, I mean it's not like I don't have lactose
issues such that any kind of milk product. Really, it's
just if I overdose on it, huh, Like if I
have a bunch of like pizza and ice cream or something.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
What they call it, like mildly sensitive maybe maybe mildly intolerant.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Yeah, I get the poopy butt.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Like like you're you're cool with like lactose at work,
but you don't want lactose marrying your your kid. You're
that kind of intolerant to lactose.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Right exactly. I just don't want to live in next
door to me. I can I can get a I
can do a pint of ice cream though, and or
is it the half pint the Ben and Jerry's with
little one.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
I think it's a pint. Is a pint the little Yeah?
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Not the little baby one?
Speaker 2 (02:27):
That's just like a fistful.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
I'm not seven.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Yeah right, I think it's a pint, is what they
sell them.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Yeah, I can do a pint of like the Chubby Hubby.
That's my old favorite.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
That's a good one. Well, basically any Ben and Jerry's
is good. I'm not a big fan of cherries and stuff.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Oh me neither.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
But other than that, I'm like pretty cool with with
all ice cream. And I used to not like bananas
and things, but now I'm like, I'm cool with bananas.
Oh yeah, yeah, like bananas and ice cream. I would
never have eaten before and now I will.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
I'm pretty picky with my ice cream flavors.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
I'm trying to think of what I really don't like,
and nothing's coming to mind except for stuff with cherry
in it.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Yeah. I don't like mint crazy. I don't like coconut crazy. Uh.
My favorite is the Chubby Hubby. And then they have
you know, have the limited runs. Yeah, they have one
out now called Candy Bar Pie.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Candy bar pie, Like, what kind of candy bar? Is
it modeled?
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Aft fordculous? I don't know. It's got nugae in it.
It doesn't taste like a specific candy bar though. It's
not like they're trying to be like a Snicker's ice
cream sneakily. It just tastes. It's just delicious.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Nice. I try. I like butterfinger and ice cream. Yeah,
what about so like places to get ice cream?
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Jenny's is delicious?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Where is that?
Speaker 1 (03:45):
They have it here on the West Side over by
Star Provisions? Okay, and they got a new and in
a punt or in a Croc Street market.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
There's a place in old town in Alexandria outside of DC, Yeah,
called Pops. It's like an old timey ice cream parlor. Awesome.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
I think I went in there actually last summer.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
It's awesome.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
But it did they have like gandy and all that
stuff or is it just an ice cream? Shit?
Speaker 2 (04:08):
It's pretty much just ice cream. There's like a couple
of like long cases. They've got like the old like
turn of the last century, like furniture and everything in
the stripe to wallpaper like they're doing it right. But
then their ice cream stands behind it too, it's good.
And then of course Friendlies, Yeah, Friendlies has the Reese's
(04:29):
Piece of Sunday, which is probably the greatest ice cream
treat ever created in a history of humanity.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yeah, growing up in Atlanta, they had something called Farrells,
which was.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
I remember Farres those They had that in Ohio too,
And on your birthday they come out with that big drum.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Oh yeah, scare me to death.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
I went under the table.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Just like the old school ice cream parlor, scaring the
Bejesus out of children everywhere.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Now they had a lot of candy selection too.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah. Yeah, man, let's just talk about let's just not
even do this. Let's just talk about ice creaming love.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I like this flavor. I like this flavor.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Everyone's starving right now for it, though, I guarantee it
that intro.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
I have one more though. Have you ever been to
the Plaza Fiesta I think is what it's called over
on Buford Highway. Yeah, oh yeah, okay, they had they
have a gelato place there, oh that had tuna flavored gelato,
raw tuna flavored gelato, and by god, it tasted exactly
(05:28):
like raw tuna.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
You're gonna say it was good.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
It wasn't bad really, like, yeah, if you if you
like sashimi or something like that, you would appreciate this.
It's not something you're like, oh man, I've got to
get some tuna flavored gelato. But you're not like it's
not like one bite and you spit it out. Yeah. Yeah,
you're just like, this is really odd but interesting, unusually tasty.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Not have to try that. Yeah. My other quickly, My
other thing I like lately is a little heat in
the ice cream, like some of them have little cayenne
in the chocolate or.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Oh yeah with cinnamon or something.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yeah. That and some salted caramel.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
I am so over salted caramel or bacon in sweetness.
I'm just so sick of that combination.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Really.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Yeah, it's all basically a ripoff of Wendy's fries and
a frosty dip together. That's fine, that's the original, that
one like origin improvement.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Yeah, all right, well I'm salivating now.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
I am as well. Let's get through this and we
can go get some ice cream. Okay, yay, you're buying. Okay,
So the history of ice cream chuck. Yeah, everyone could
have possibly have been around.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Where'd you find this by the way, that we need
to give a good shout. Was that the Dairy Association, Yes, yeah, yeah,
the I think the International Dairy Association, the big guy,
not the regional dairy. They came up with this, this
kind of this history of ice cream or dairy frozen
dairy treats.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
It's a better way to put it, because ice cream
is the lion's share of frozen dairy treats. But technically
it falls under the umbrella of frozen dairy.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Treats along with things like sherbet and gelato and frozen yogurt, right,
or ice cream sandwiches. Yeah, novelties exactly. Those were good too. Well,
my friend, it goes back they say as far as
second century BC, But they can't pinpoint like a definite
person or place for sure. They just know that it
(07:23):
started popping up in history, like with Alexander the Great,
he had flavored ice and snow with honey and nectar.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah, snow cone.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah, and that makes sense that would be the origin
of ice cream. It makes me laugh. In this thing,
they said that Nero and Claudia Caesar would frequently send
runners to the mountains for snow. That just seems like
a very Roman emperor thing to do. Like I'd like
something cold and sweet, go right in, like three hours
later they'd come back, you know, half dead.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah, here is your ice snow cone exactly.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
But they would flavor those with fruits and juices and
that was sort of another part of the beginning of
ice cream.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Apparently all this is going on in a vacuum too,
like over in.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Asia in different places.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yeah, in the Mid East and Asia wherever. They had
mountains in these areas and they could get snow and
ice because Marco Polo and I think the thirteenth century
came back to Italy and said, check this idea out. Yeah,
frozen fruit treats. And that was basically the origin of
(08:28):
ice cream in the West.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Yeah, in England, they were big on what they called
cream ice yep, because England, he got to say it's
slightly funny or they would probably call it proper, right,
you know, there's an e at the end of cream,
is there? No, No, but they would be. And Catherine Demadici,
(08:51):
who we mentioned in the episode Oh No Stradama Nostra
damas episode, that's right, she was big on it. She
was the wife of Henry the Second and back then though,
it was you know, in the fifteen hundreds, in the
sixteenth century, it was only like royalty because ice was
you know, they didn't have freezers and they didn't have
(09:12):
ice machines.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
You needed a guy to go run up to the
mountain and bring that down. Yeah. No, it was a
big deal to have ice, unless, of course, it was winter,
in which case you were like, oh, yeah, I can
have a frozen treat. But if it were summer, yeah,
and you were enjoying a frozen dairy.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Treat and the runner, you're rich. Yeah, you're super rich.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
So apparently by about the seventeenth century there was at
least one cafe in Paris. I think it was the
first cafe in Paris that started selling ice cream to
the public in sixteen sixty.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
They basically made it egalitarian, and from that point on
ice cream was a definite luxury item, but you didn't
have to be royalty to obtain it.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Yeah, that's a good way of saying it. Yeah. In
the United States, the first time they found it in
print was in a letter in seventeen forty four by
a guest of the Governor of Maryland. William Blayden or Bladen.
And there was an ad in seventeen seventy seven May
twelfth the New York Gazette for ice cream, So it
(10:18):
was for sure for sale to the people back then,
right by that time.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Yeah, George Washington had a recipe. Thomas Jefferson had a recipe. Yeah,
Dolly Madison used to like to serve it at the
White House.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
George Washington ate a lot of it, right, didn't They say?
Two hundred dollars for one summer?
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Yeah, and I failed to go to the West Egg
currency converter.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
It's a lot.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
I imagine that's a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Yeah, but he made you know that he had guests,
and he may have shared it with his Oh, I
would hope so staff.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
You never know, especially if that's like fifty thousand dollars
worth of ice cream. I can't eat that in one summer,
even if you're Joey Chestnut, world record holder for the
most ice cream eating?
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Is he?
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (10:58):
How much did he eat?
Speaker 2 (10:59):
You know, one point eight gallons in six minutes.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
One point eight gallons in six minutes. That doesn't seem
like that much.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Oh that's a lot.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Yeah, that's pretty speedy. But hey, that's why he's Joey Chestnut.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Plus, don't forget the brain freeze.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Oh yeah, man, do you have a thing on that
brain freeze?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
No, I've done it. Don't be dumb on it.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Though before Do you remember what it is? Like?
Speaker 2 (11:21):
What is brain freeze?
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Oh? What is brain freeze? Yeah, there's a there's a
blood vessel that runs from your brain into the roof
of your mouth. It becomes constricted, which changes the volume
of your brain, which gives you a headache, gotcha, which
is why if you place your tongue against the roof
of your mouth while you have brain freeze, it warms
(11:45):
up that blood vessel, allowing it to relax again.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Or just slight a match and hold that under your
roof of your mouth.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
That's another way to go.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yeah, you'll concentrate on that pain instead of the brain freeze. Interesting.
I don't get brain freeze because I think as an
adult you know how not to wolf it down like that.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
I've gotten it accidentally though, as an adult from time
to time. Really yeah, no, good, No, it's terrible. It's
as terrible as an adult as it is when you're
a child.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
It's probably worse than an adults just debilitating, you know. Yeah,
it's so painful. So, like you said, until around eighteen hundred,
it was mostly for the upper class. But then, like
everything else in industry in America, around that time, manufacturing
became more widespread and cheaper, and all of a sudden,
(12:34):
you had warehouses that were big freezers, and you had shipping.
You could ship things cold and frozen.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Right, So you had like the manufacturing aspect in place.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yeah, homogenizer machines, electric power, right, mechanical refrigeration basically.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
But even still you had you had the manufacturing in place.
The distribution, though, was still limited to say, like a
store somebody who could make money by investing in some
freezer cases and then selling it to the public. It
wasn't until ice boxes became widespread in America that the
ice cream industry really blew up, because then you could
(13:12):
sell to the guy down at Pops. You could also
sell to pops next door neighbor who took it home
to keep in his freezer.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
And thank god that happened.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, and actually, as far as making ice cream, that
the you know, the hand crank ice cream maker that
used like rock salt and all that stuff. That was
invented by a woman named Nancy Johnson in the eighteen fifties,
I think, yeah, and she patented it and apparently everybody
(13:43):
ripped her off. She sold the patent for like two
hundred bucks, and the guy who bought it from her
turned around and made a fortune off of it. But
I guess he ultimately got ripped off by a bunch
of copycats. But that same thing is still in use today,
Like you can go buy the Johnson crank that same
yeahs and crank ice cream maker and make your own
ice cream the eighteen fifties way.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Well, you mentioned take home ice cream being a big
deal to as far as it's spreading, I do have
a little modern stat Oh yeah, at least from a
few years ago, that is still the biggest part of
the market. Sixty seven percent of the overall market is
take home ice cream.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Well I saw that eighty seven percent of Americans have
ice cream in their freezer right now.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Yeah, I don't, I can't.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
It doesn't stick around no.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Like you know, if you're going to get a pint,
you might as well just plow through it and be
done with it and then get some a few weeks later.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
You're not a quitter.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
No, and I don't. I can't just keep like a
gallon of ice cream in the house.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
That's oh, that's that's a bad move.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
It's a bad move for Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Yeah, yeah, it's a bad move for everybody.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Well, no, some people have willpower.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Yeah, I guess you're right.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
You're one of them.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
I don't keep a gallon of ice cream in my house.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Yeah, but you got willpower to a large degree, I think. Yeah, well,
you're the guy who quit smoking by just saying I'm
not going smoke anymore.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
You know.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Yeah, I guess I do have a degree of willpower.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
But I do not. So we're now in the nineteenth century,
in late eighteen hundreds, and the professional soda jerk at
soda fountain shops pops up and they make things called
like root beer floats and coke floats and soda floats, right,
which I haven't had one in a long time. I
used to love root beer floats. Yeah, but I don't
know why. I just it's not something I see very
(15:27):
much anymore. Well, you have to make it the trouble
of putting it together yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you don't.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
See floats very often anymore. I'm sure there's some places
that sell them.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
But they were good though.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Oh yeah, man, rut beer and ice cream is a
winning combination.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Yeah, I mean, I haven't had one since I was
a kid.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Probably coke works too, yeah, coke floats good too.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Root Beer floats are the thing, though, I think you're right.
And then this was for me the fact of the show.
I did not know about this religious criticism back then.
They didn't like you eating things that were so rich
and like a gluttonous thought was sinful. Yeah, well yeah
on Sundays, that is. And so in response, they took
(16:07):
out the carbonated water or the root beer or whatever
and made a Sunday And that's what I called it
a Sunday originally.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
But apparently they were like, are you mocking us? And
the Soda Jerks Union said no, no, and they changed
the spelling from Sunday to sun Dae.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Because they were mocking them, right, yes, and they were like,
this is their active retribution, changing the spelling of Sunday.
And the other cool thing too, was during World War Two.
Apparently it was the armed forces were all trying to
outstep one another in providing ice cream to the troops
in new and exciting ways because it was such a
morale booster, of course, to get ice cream when you're
(16:44):
at war, right, you know, a little taste of home.
And I think that was it the Navy that had
the ship.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yeah, the world's first floating ice cream parlor.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
That's awesome in the Western Pacific.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Well, even before that, in World War One, ice cream
was deemed an essential food, and so ice cream manufacturers
got rations of sugar so they could keep making ice
cream during the war even though everything else is being rationed.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah, and Ed points out that during the Depression everything
kind of slowed down that was a non essential, including
ice cream, but it never went away, and through the
years it's pretty much gained in popularity. I think in
the seventies is when you started to see a little
more health conscious efforts, like the frozen yogurts and the
(17:30):
like fro yo fro yo. Right, Emily loves the fro yo.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
It's good stuff.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Like the new stuff that's really like from the Greek yogurt,
you know, oh.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Yeah, that's tangy changes everything.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Not like I think this can't be yogurt. Growing up,
was that even yogurt that was just like soft serve
ice cream.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
One is it this campy? I thought it was the
country's best yogurt tcby.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
We heard it was this can't be yogurt. Huh, maybe
it was different. I wonder it had to be the same,
Yeah TCB why Yeah?
Speaker 2 (17:58):
No, TCBY was great. I don't don't know what it was.
I think it's still around.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
It had to be yogurt because they couldn't call it that,
but it wasn't. Definitely not the tangy stuff that you
seem like at a pink berry and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
So good.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Yeah, I'm not the hugest man.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
I love that stuff. Each bite is just like it's
just a trip through a flowery meadow. Every bite, really, Yes.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Do you get the vanilla and add your stuff to it?
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Or I get the regular like the yeah, just the
I guess plain version. Yeah, and then you throw in
a little mango, some blueberries. Oh, look at you the
white yogurt chips on top. Uh huh, that's a good combination.
Or if you want to go a different route, there's like,
you know, chocolate crunch and maybe some other kind of
chocolately delicious treat on top. Man, I want some ice
(18:50):
cream so bad.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
All right, Well we'll get we'll get to the science
of ice cream, which is decidedly less yummy sounding right
after these messages. So, buddy, you said that all of
(19:20):
that stuff is frozen dairy treats, right, but not necessarily
ice cream because there's a definition, correct, Yes, So.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Ice cream is a colloid, right, yeah, which is an
unusual and complex substance. And actually quicksand is a colloid.
It's a colloidal gel. Yeah, technically remember that. But ice
cream is a colloid. And a colloid is a substance
where you have things that don't normally mix that are
(19:49):
mixed together, right, And in this case you have fat
and sugar and milk mixed together with a little bit
of air thrown in. And what you need to create
a colloid is something called an emulsifier. That's the bonding
agent that holds everything together these things that don't normally mix.
And in the earliest cases, egg yolks were the emulsifier
(20:12):
that held everything together. And of course, if you're making
ice cream at home, you can still use egg yolks
as in a multifier. It's an easy go to thing.
But if you're manufacturing it on a large scale, you're
probably using something like zan thing gum or something else
to emulsify and stabilize the whole thing to hold it together.
But yes, ice cream specifically is a colloid that has
(20:33):
undergone a very specific manufacturing process, and if you take
or add different ingredients or different steps in the process,
then you have something different, like frozen yogurt or a
saft serve ice cream or subert.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Yeah, because frozen yogurt isn't just yogurt that they freeze,
which I never knew. It's actually during the ice cream
making process they'll put in the yogurt cultures to make
it frozen yogurt. Yeah, you don't start with yogurt, you
may yogurt doing it. Yeah, I didn't know that either.
Pretty cool, agreed, which is why every time I just
throw the yogurt in the freezer, it doesn't taste anything
(21:07):
like I want it.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Really cold yogurt sprouts.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
The USDA actually has an ingredient standard for it to
be labeled ice cream, which has to it has to
be at least ten percent milk fat and a minimum
of six percent non fat milk solids like casins and
a gallon has to weigh four point five pounds.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
I think that's neat.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Yeah, sure, because I.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Can't get its act together and anything, but it can
define ice cream.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Yeah. And the reason they have the minimum or the yeah,
the minimum poundage is because, as we mentioned earlier, lighter
ice cream is generally cheaper because it means there's just
more air whipped in there. And that's why Ben and
Jerry's pine is like a brick in your stomach.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Yeah. And the grabster who wrote this points out that
that's usual a general rule of thumb that the heavier
the ice cream, the higher quality it is. Yeah, but
he points out to be fair, you need to compare
like types. Sure, Like you can't compare something that's loaded
down with like brownies and Snickers with like a plain vanilla,
because you know the brownies and Snickers are going to
(22:17):
add weight and throw off your judgment.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
That's right in more ways than one. So milk fat,
there is a range of milk fat you can use.
Premium ice creams max out at about sixteen percent at
the most, but generally they're about fourteen percent. In ice
cream in general is a minimum of about ten percent.
And butterfat, which is another name for it.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Delicious, so great, Both of them sound great.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Butterfat makes it taste good and it makes it creamier
and richer. But it's interesting that they found that sixteen
percent is about as high as you want to go. Though.
It's not like, oh, just make it fifty percent, that'd
be even better.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
It's just vomit after every bite.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Well you would, and people they point out and their
head points out, you wouln't. People would't neat as much, right,
because it is so rich, and it is so calorie
rich as well, And so they found that perfect combination
of enough to make you plow through that pint and
want to get another one the next night.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yeah, about fourteen to sixteen percent.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Yeah, yeah, that sounds pretty good when you're talking butterfat.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Ten percent for the cheap stuff that like ned Flanders
would eat, you know, yeah, totally. So. Like I said,
ice cream is a colloid and it's created by adding
egg yolk to milk, fat and sugar.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
And I think that's a custard if you use the egg.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Yolk, right, I think you used more egg yolk.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Yeah, one point four percent.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
At least something like that.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
I was higher in that, Yeah, frozen custard is at
least one point four percent egg yolk solids. Okay, so
they're even that's even worse for you, right, So that's
just like, well not necessarily well cholesterol wise, sure, But
the ice cream itself is specifically just this combination of
different types of ingredients with other agents that hold the
(24:09):
whole thing together that's put through this process. Right, So
when you have your sugar, when you have your cream,
your milk, and you have your eggs or whatever you're
going to use as a stabilizer or mulsifier, you put
the whole thing together, and what you have right there
is an ice cream mix. And no matter whether you're
(24:31):
making it at home or if you just bought a
factory or inherited it from your rich uncle who just
died and they left it to you, then you're going
to be following pretty much the same process using virtually
the same ingredients. Yeah, I've got an ice cream machine,
which when I looked at the process of making ice cream,
(24:52):
it's pretty much what goes on in this little thing,
Like you freeze the canister, which I found out the
hard way that's how you do it, because I was like, man,
it's not getting solid.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Oh no, way you did it without freezing the key?
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Yeah, I had no idea, Like, you just used it
at room temperage, at room temperature, and how long did
you try that for? It's fun for quite a while
before I realized what was going on.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
We luckily figured that out from the get go made
some pretty killer lemon gelato once.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yeah. So you freeze the thing and then it's the
canister actually spins and they have like a blade in
there that disrupts It introduces the air bubbles, which is
key to making ice cream nice and rich and creamy.
And it also acts as a scraper to keep ice
from forming, which is exactly what happens in big factories.
(25:38):
It's pretty much the same process.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Right, or if you're using the hand crank thing, that's
what you just said.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
The Johnson crank, right.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Yeah, what you just said listed off all of the
necessary components to making ice cream. You've got something that's
cooling it that whether that little drum that you put
in the freezer or you have ammonia filled tubes that
are freezing a tube that your mixes in. Yeah, so
you've got that right, Yeah, you.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Have, and the ammonia tubes. We should point out there's
no ammonia. It's just making the tube cold, right. The
ammonia's not being introduced to the ice cream at all.
It's just, yeah, the tube is up against the tube
that the ice cream is in, that's right. Or if
you are making it at home using a Johnson crank,
you're gonna use rock salt, right, that's right. So I
(26:26):
was kind of I didn't understand what the point of
using rock salt was, so I looked into it. We
covered a little bit within the salt episode, but not
like super in depth.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Okay. So basically, the reason that you would add rock
salt to ice is because if you just used ice,
the freezing point of ice is thirty two degrees farrentheight. Yeah,
it takes more than that, more degrees than that. Let
me put it a different way. More to the milk
freezes at a lower temperature than ice. Yes, right, So
(26:57):
when you add salt, you actually lower the freezing point
of that ice. Oh okay, Because when you're using ice,
it's a fresh water mixture. Salt water ice has a
lower freezing temperature, so you're melting it and it's melting
and refreezing and as the ice melts, the way that
it's melting is by drawing heat from something else, in
(27:19):
this case your ice cream mixture, right, right, So when
you add salt, it has to draw more heat to
melt because it has a lower freezing point freezing temperature.
So that's why you add salt. It actually lowers the
freezing point, which allows you to cool your ice cream faster. Ah, right,
So it lowers the freezing point. Yeah, milk has a
(27:41):
lower freezing point, and it makes the it draws the
heat out more quickly, so those ice crystals don't form
on the side.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
Just that simple little thing is the magic that makes
it happen.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
Yeah. We had a electric ice cream maker growing up
that was the same as the Johnson crank version, but
you just plug it in, not like the new one
that I have today, which is much.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Different, right, which you definitely plug in.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Yeah, definitely plug in and you gotta freeze that thing
apparently so funny. But my church. One of my favorite
memories growing up is my church would have ice cream
socials where everybody would bring their own homemade ice creams
and there would just be a table with like thirty
of those steel containers you know that people just take
it right out of the old you know, ice rock
(28:26):
salt beIN right and just set it on the table right,
and you would just go berserk. You know.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
As a child, we had a Johnson crank. Yeah, yeah, growing.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Up, and you probably had to do it right because
the parents are always like that's the fun part.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
I don't I'm sure I did. I don't really remember.
I just remember the wooden bucket thing with the crank
on top. Yeah, that's what I remember. And like a
bag of rock salt, that's right, man, that we also
use for the driveway too.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Oh sure, yeah, yeah, of course we did in Atlanta.
But I remember when I saw that rock salt come out.
It was a special evening at the Brian House. Oh yeah,
So I mentioned the little paddle. It's called the dasher,
which is the blade inside the tube. And this is
if you're an ice cream factory, and like we said,
it whips it up, introducing those air bubbles and that's
(29:13):
what gives it the structure, and like I said, also
prevents the ice crystals, larger ice crystals from forming because
you don't want that. No, you want it cold, but
you don't want ice and we.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Should say by this time, you've got your ice cream mixture,
but you've already added whatever flavor you're going to add.
But if you're adding chunks of stuff, which you should,
you're not doing that quite yet. No, so you're freezing it.
What you've just created is a frozen ice cream mixture.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
It is not technically USDA standard ice cream yet. If
you stopped right here, and even if you added the
snickers or the brownies or whatever or both, what you
would have is soft serve ice cream. Yeah, the ice
cream still has another step to go through to become
regular old ice cream, and that's the hardening process.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Yeah, the hard freez. And that's basically all is is.
You take that soft serve and you have to get
it down super low, at least to zero degrees fahrenheit.
But when you're in an ice cream factory, you're going
to pump it down even lower because you're going to
be shipping it and packaging it and that you want
it to stay nice and hard throughout that whole process. Yeah,
(30:17):
and yeah, and that that's how you do it. That's
pretty much it.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
That's pretty much making ice cream.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
It's a great, great thing that everyone should.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Try making ice cream. Sure, sure, yeah, well, actually that's
funny that you say that, because whether you have a
hand crank or one of those awesome electric ones that
you are that you have to freeze the drum ahead
of time. You can also just make it at home
with like basically nothing, Yeah, just using a couple of bags. Baggies. Yeah,
(30:49):
like a bigger baggy, a smaller baggy. You make a
little rock salt mixture. And well, I won't go through
the whole recipe, but if you go to how stuff
works and look up how ice cream works, there's a
recipe for five minute ice cream that makes us a
little bit using nothing but plastic bags and the ice
cream ingredients.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Yeah, and I don't think we mentioned that it's pasteurized
along the way too. Oh, it's an important step.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Pasteurization keeps you from getting salmonilla. Yes, and if you're
making your own mix it home, you can even do
that yourself with a double boiler.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
So we'll talk a little bit about just how much
everybody loves ice cream right after this.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
All right, buddy, we will finish this out with some
stats and the like. But first we should talk about
overrun because that's an important part of ice cream because
when you're making ice cream, there's gonna be an increase
in volume as you go because you're whipping all that
air into it. Yeah, and that increase is called overrun, right,
(32:04):
and it's indicated by a percentage.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yeah, so if the volume goes from one gallon of
ice cream mixture to a completed one and a half
gallons of ice cream, yeah, it's a fifty percent over run,
which is good.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
But what the pros shoot for, like our friends at
Bluebell with great, great commercials.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Yeah, they do make fantastic ice cream.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Yeah, it is really good. So if you are a
professional ice creamier, you might have as much as one
hundred percent overrun. But the premium ice creams are more dense,
so they have less overrun, right, which is why they're heavier.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Yes, But you can also get into a situation where
your ice cream is dense because you're not using much
stabilizer or mulsifier. So that's not good, no, because it
makes your ice cream chewy. Oh No, So just really
dense ice cream is not necessarily the best thing. You
want a mixture between the two of somewhat dense but
(33:04):
not totally dense. But not super light ice cream. There's
a there's a balance that you want to achieve.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Yeah, because the air, like we said, is what gives
it the structure that you appreciate, and you know it's familiar. Right,
you get some Chewi ice cream, it's no good.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Noh and chuck, we were remiss in not mentioning ice
cream cones.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Yeah, I'm not a cone guy, are you? Yes? Oh? Really?
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Oh yeah?
Speaker 1 (33:28):
So when you go to like you go out, you
get it in the cone every time?
Speaker 2 (33:32):
No?
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Just sometimes? Yes, do you get the waffle cone.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Cone? I like, I like it all except the the
I don't know what they call the non sugar cone
one styrofoam. Yeah, yeah, that's definitely the lowest on my list.
But that one's fine. But yes, I guess it does
go waffle sugar cheap cone okay as far as order
of preference goes. But no waffle cone obviously, that like
(34:00):
just adds to the whole thing, smelling like fresh made
waffle cones being made while you're ordering ice cream.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Really, I always get the cup. She almost always do,
just for like, just to be healthier. Yeah, while I'm
eating ice cream. Well no, but I mean that's a decision.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Yeah, for sure, you know, but it is preferable in
a waffle cone. I think they're delicious.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
I might start getting a cone every now and then.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
So there's a there's an origin story to the waffle cone,
and a lot of people place it at the nineteen
oh four World's Fair in Saint Louis, that's right, and
that is probably not where ice cream cones were invented,
but that is where they were popularized.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Yeah. I mean, if you're at a World's Fair, there's
gonna be some waffling going on. It's waffle making.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
There definitely was some waffles being made, but there was
also some ice cream being served. That's documented, that's right.
And the story goes that the ice cream makers ran
out of plates or bowls or whatever they usually use,
and they turned to the waffle makers, who said, hey,
we can help you out for a fee. Yeah, let's
turn these things into some sort of cone and bam.
(35:06):
That's what happened. But it turns out that the person
who actually invented the ice cream cone was an Italian
immigrant to America named Italo Mark Please go.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Ahead, you mean Italo MARCHIONI right, Yeah, and he also
invented the ice karema a euskadima A wee alskadima, but
ice kadima. I think he was the first one to
coin that term.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
He was into ice cream big time.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Yeah, but he actually filed the patent for the cone
making machine.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
A full year ahead of the fair.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Yeah, so he generally gets credited with the invention of
the ice cream cone. Although just because you patent the
machine doesn't necessarily mean that you were the first person
who thought of the cone.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
No. Supposedly there's French cookbooks that date back to the
eighteen forties that have recipes for ice cream cones.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Oh really Yeah. Well, and we also didn't mention Jacob Fusel.
We'd probably need to mention that guy because he was
the first. He opened the first wholesale manufacturing operation in
the United States in Baltimore, and he, like some of
the greatest success stories in business, sort of got into
it by accident because he was just a dairy guy
(36:12):
who had too much cream and was like, well, I
guess I can try this ice cream thing out, And
before you knew it, he was selling more ice cream
than he was anything else. Yes, it's good for him,
good for us. Good for that's true, good for all
of us.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
So if you want to become like a Jacob Fusel type,
you can actually go, depending on where you are in
the country, to your local major university and they may
or may not depending on the size of their dairy program. Yeh,
offer like a real ice cream course.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Yeah, Penn State is known for one, correct.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Yeah, Wisconsin has one, of course. Actually, Penn State graduated
Ben and Jerry back in nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Really, yep, in ice creamery. Yes, I thought you're gonna say, like, no,
there were architects.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
Now, one of them tried to get into med school.
He graduated and couldn't afford med school. Yeah, the other
one just dropped out of college. But both of them
went together to Penn State's ice cream course and graduated.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Well, I saw. I went to their website to look
at some of their facts, and they think they said
they started their initial business with like four thousand dollars.
I saw twelve twelve grand. Yeah, well either way, that's cheap. No,
you know it is. I do have some other stats though,
lay them on us, Chuck. Yeah, it's been a while
since we've had a stat run. The majority of US
(37:32):
ice cream and frozen dessert manufacturers have been in business
for more than fifty years, and many are still family owned.
This is why you see like the bluebells and stuff
like that. R you know, there's not a lot of
upstarts like you know, like extreme ice cream.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Right, made with mountain dew code red.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Oh god, used area approximates. And this is a few
years ago. Twenty courts per capita.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
What the US eats every year?
Speaker 1 (38:03):
No? Produced? Oh wow, yeah, they produced twenty quarts per capita.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
What's interesting, though, is the United States isn't the leader
in ice cream consumption. Did you know that? Who is
New Zealand?
Speaker 1 (38:15):
No way?
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Yeah, New Zealand per capita?
Speaker 1 (38:18):
I guess obviously, Yeah, well yes, yeah, so the average
New Zealander eats seven and a half gallons of ice
cream a year.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
Wow, Americans eat five and a half gallons. Huh yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Apparently, Asia, the Caribbean, and Mexico and Latin America all
import ice cream as well to a large degree. And
the most popular flavor is still vanilla, which I had
to explain to Emily was a real flavor. She thinks
it's an absence of all flavors, right, like white light. Yeah,
it's like, no, vanilla's a thing.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
Yeah, and some people love it. Vanilla is still good.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
She thinks it's a waste of calories to eat anything
that's just plain vanilla.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
They're really good. Vanilla's out there that you're just like
this is this is all that's needed.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Like super creamy, like vanilla bean yummy. Yeah, and then
chocolate chip miant and cookies and cream followed as the
next most popular. I'm surprised playing chocolate is not on
the list.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
I saw a grub hub survey. They did most popular
ice cream flavors by flavor ordered, and vanilla was number one,
but green tea was number two. And I was thinking
about it, and it's probably because, like at a Japanese restaurant, Yeah,
(39:34):
you don't really have any other options besides you know,
green tea.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Yeah. I've never had the green tea ice cream as a.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
Good Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Yeah really yeah, dude, I don't eat deserted restaurants.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
It's so good.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Yeah, I'm gonna have to start.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
If you go to a good Japanese restaurant, they bring
it out, whether you asked for it or not, part
of the meal. I know, it'll be like Green Tea
or Red Bean is another one too. That's a pretty
good ice cream, but Green Tea fully has it destroyed?
Speaker 1 (40:01):
That sounds delicious?
Speaker 2 (40:02):
Yes it is.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
I'm hungry.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Yeah. So if you want to know more about ice
cream and to get this awesome, really easy five minute
ice cream recipe, go to HowStuffWorks dot com and type
ice cream in the search bar. And since I said
search bar, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
I'm going to call this first of two scientific method emails,
so you're gonna hear one here and then one in
the next one Awesome because these are great. I was
super proud of that one, and we got a lot
of kudos from scientists, which is always nice. Hey guys,
my name is Danny. I'm twenty three and recently graduated
with a degree in astronomy and physics. Now work at
(40:43):
an aerospace company in LA on a space mission concept
called the Star Shade. Where you go, Danny, I know
the Star Shade is a really awesome piece of tech
that allows will allow us to image planets around other
stars and ultimately search for life outside of our Solar system.
I'm writing because just listening to the podcast on the
scientific method, and as someone whose job regularly involves the
(41:04):
scientific method, I want to express my appreciation for you
guys recording such a great discussion on the subject. It's
extremely important to give the public the opportunity to learn
about science. I think that your podcast is a great
vehicle by which this is achieved. So thanks. I remember
once in the show, you guys let it slip that
you get a few hundred emails a week, so statistically speaking,
I'm twice as likely to become a millionaire than to
(41:26):
get my email read.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
On the show, I saw that and I felt like
he was baiting us.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
Oh, he totally was, and it worked. But in the
case that some miracle happens and you do read it,
I'd love if you could plug the astrophysics blog my
friends and I have. It's called Astrophysics Unleashed and can
be found online at astrophysics dash unleashed dot tumblr dot com.
And it's a place where we seek to expose the
(41:50):
beauty hidden within astronomy and modern science. It's a great
place for the inquiring mind to find food for thought
or to ask questions. So that is from Danny, and
he said I want to shout out to Jerry j E. R.
Ibo's afraid I'd spell her name wrong. Hopefully that is right.
Tell her that I have no idea what she's like
at all, but I'd be willing to bet that she's
(42:10):
really cool.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
That is nice, man. Usually people have like a better
chance of getting struck by lightning. And it's spelling Jerry's
name correctly. But he nailed it well.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
And here's a spoiler. The other scientists said the exact
same thing about spelling her name wrong, and he spelled
it right.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Wow. So how about that, man, scientists or smart If
you want to get in touch with us, you can
send us an email to Stuff Podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com,
and you can join us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com. Stuff you Should Know
is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ice Screamer, The You screama, Oh we all scream a
for how ice cream works. The great episode celebrating the
best dessert treat in all honesty. I mean, it's just
nothing better than ice cream. This is from February fifth,
twenty fifteen. I don't eat ice cream much anymore because
it disagrees with my body. But boy, every now and
(00:21):
then I get one of those pints gl chubby ubby
if you can find it, though it done your throat
and suffer the consequences. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,
a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's
Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry. So this is
Stuff you Should Know. The Dreaming of Summer in the
Middle of Winter edition.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Oh my friend, ice cream is a year round treat
for me.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yeah, sure, I know. I have.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Oh yeah, what you have? We're gonna buzz markt a lot, probably.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
Rocky Road and Vividly Vanilla.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
What brand is it?
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Oh? Yeah, yeah, they're delicious. Nice.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Yeah? Was it heavier? Light?
Speaker 2 (01:11):
It was light?
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yeah. After reading this, I was like, man, this is
very light.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
A lot of air in there.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I taught myself to juggle with them.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Oh, well that's exciting.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
That was a cross reference.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yeah, I'm I'm Ben and Jerry's guy.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Well, yeah, it's great stuff.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yeah. I can't have too much of it though, because
I got the lactose issues.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Really. Yeah, and ice cream is your favorite treat.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah, it's pretty sad.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
That's self, that's self hate.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Yeah, ice cream followed by a large glass of milk
right now, just kidding.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Then you just inject a bunch of casins directly into
your neck.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Yeah, I mean it's not like I don't have lactose
issues such that any kind of milk product. Really, it's
just if I overdose on it, huh, Like if I
have a bunch of like pizza and ice cream or something.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
What they call it, like mildly sensitive maybe maybe mildly intolerant.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Yeah, I get the poopy butt.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Like like you're you're cool with like lactose at work,
but you don't want lactose marrying your your kid. You're
that kind of intolerant to lactose.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Right exactly. I just don't want to live in next
door to me. I can I can get a I
can do a pint of ice cream though, and or
is it the half pint the Ben and Jerry's with
little one.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
I think it's a pint. Is a pint the little Yeah?
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Not the little baby one?
Speaker 2 (02:27):
That's just like a fistful.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
I'm not seven.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Yeah right, I think it's a pint, is what they
sell them.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Yeah, I can do a pint of like the Chubby Hubby.
That's my old favorite.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
That's a good one. Well, basically any Ben and Jerry's
is good. I'm not a big fan of cherries and stuff.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Oh me neither.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
But other than that, I'm like pretty cool with with
all ice cream. And I used to not like bananas
and things, but now I'm like, I'm cool with bananas.
Oh yeah, yeah, like bananas and ice cream. I would
never have eaten before and now I will.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
I'm pretty picky with my ice cream flavors.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
I'm trying to think of what I really don't like,
and nothing's coming to mind except for stuff with cherry
in it.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Yeah. I don't like mint crazy. I don't like coconut crazy. Uh.
My favorite is the Chubby Hubby. And then they have
you know, have the limited runs. Yeah, they have one
out now called Candy Bar Pie.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Candy bar pie, Like, what kind of candy bar? Is
it modeled?
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Aft fordculous? I don't know. It's got nugae in it.
It doesn't taste like a specific candy bar though. It's
not like they're trying to be like a Snicker's ice
cream sneakily. It just tastes. It's just delicious.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Nice. I try. I like butterfinger and ice cream. Yeah,
what about so like places to get ice cream?
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Jenny's is delicious?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Where is that?
Speaker 1 (03:45):
They have it here on the West Side over by
Star Provisions? Okay, and they got a new and in
a punt or in a Croc Street market.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
There's a place in old town in Alexandria outside of DC, Yeah,
called Pops. It's like an old timey ice cream parlor. Awesome.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
I think I went in there actually last summer.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
It's awesome.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
But it did they have like gandy and all that
stuff or is it just an ice cream? Shit?
Speaker 2 (04:08):
It's pretty much just ice cream. There's like a couple
of like long cases. They've got like the old like
turn of the last century, like furniture and everything in
the stripe to wallpaper like they're doing it right. But
then their ice cream stands behind it too, it's good.
And then of course Friendlies, Yeah, Friendlies has the Reese's
(04:29):
Piece of Sunday, which is probably the greatest ice cream
treat ever created in a history of humanity.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yeah, growing up in Atlanta, they had something called Farrells,
which was.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
I remember Farres those They had that in Ohio too,
And on your birthday they come out with that big drum.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Oh yeah, scare me to death.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
I went under the table.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
Just like the old school ice cream parlor, scaring the
Bejesus out of children everywhere.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Now they had a lot of candy selection too.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah. Yeah, man, let's just talk about let's just not
even do this. Let's just talk about ice creaming love.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
I like this flavor. I like this flavor.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Everyone's starving right now for it, though, I guarantee it
that intro.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
I have one more though. Have you ever been to
the Plaza Fiesta I think is what it's called over
on Buford Highway. Yeah, oh yeah, okay, they had they
have a gelato place there, oh that had tuna flavored gelato,
raw tuna flavored gelato, and by god, it tasted exactly
(05:28):
like raw tuna.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
You're gonna say it was good.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
It wasn't bad really, like, yeah, if you if you
like sashimi or something like that, you would appreciate this.
It's not something you're like, oh man, I've got to
get some tuna flavored gelato. But you're not like it's
not like one bite and you spit it out. Yeah. Yeah,
you're just like, this is really odd but interesting, unusually tasty.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Not have to try that. Yeah. My other quickly, My
other thing I like lately is a little heat in
the ice cream, like some of them have little cayenne
in the chocolate or.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Oh yeah with cinnamon or something.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yeah. That and some salted caramel.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
I am so over salted caramel or bacon in sweetness.
I'm just so sick of that combination.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
Really.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Yeah, it's all basically a ripoff of Wendy's fries and
a frosty dip together. That's fine, that's the original, that
one like origin improvement.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Yeah, all right, well I'm salivating now.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
I am as well. Let's get through this and we
can go get some ice cream. Okay, yay, you're buying. Okay,
So the history of ice cream chuck. Yeah, everyone could
have possibly have been around.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Where'd you find this by the way, that we need
to give a good shout. Was that the Dairy Association, Yes, yeah, yeah,
the I think the International Dairy Association, the big guy,
not the regional dairy. They came up with this, this
kind of this history of ice cream or dairy frozen
dairy treats.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
It's a better way to put it, because ice cream
is the lion's share of frozen dairy treats. But technically
it falls under the umbrella of frozen dairy.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Treats along with things like sherbet and gelato and frozen yogurt, right,
or ice cream sandwiches. Yeah, novelties exactly. Those were good too. Well,
my friend, it goes back they say as far as
second century BC, But they can't pinpoint like a definite
person or place for sure. They just know that it
(07:23):
started popping up in history, like with Alexander the Great,
he had flavored ice and snow with honey and nectar.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah, snow cone.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah, and that makes sense that would be the origin
of ice cream. It makes me laugh. In this thing,
they said that Nero and Claudia Caesar would frequently send
runners to the mountains for snow. That just seems like
a very Roman emperor thing to do. Like I'd like
something cold and sweet, go right in, like three hours
later they'd come back, you know, half dead.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah, here is your ice snow cone exactly.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
But they would flavor those with fruits and juices and
that was sort of another part of the beginning of
ice cream.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
Apparently all this is going on in a vacuum too,
like over in.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Asia in different places.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yeah, in the Mid East and Asia wherever. They had
mountains in these areas and they could get snow and
ice because Marco Polo and I think the thirteenth century
came back to Italy and said, check this idea out. Yeah,
frozen fruit treats. And that was basically the origin of
(08:28):
ice cream in the West.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Yeah, in England, they were big on what they called
cream ice yep, because England, he got to say it's
slightly funny or they would probably call it proper, right,
you know, there's an e at the end of cream,
is there? No, No, but they would be. And Catherine Demadici,
(08:51):
who we mentioned in the episode Oh No Stradama Nostra
damas episode, that's right, she was big on it. She
was the wife of Henry the Second and back then though,
it was you know, in the fifteen hundreds, in the
sixteenth century, it was only like royalty because ice was
you know, they didn't have freezers and they didn't have
(09:12):
ice machines.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
You needed a guy to go run up to the
mountain and bring that down. Yeah. No, it was a
big deal to have ice, unless, of course, it was winter,
in which case you were like, oh, yeah, I can
have a frozen treat. But if it were summer, yeah,
and you were enjoying a frozen dairy.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
Treat and the runner, you're rich. Yeah, you're super rich.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
So apparently by about the seventeenth century there was at
least one cafe in Paris. I think it was the
first cafe in Paris that started selling ice cream to
the public in sixteen sixty.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
They basically made it egalitarian, and from that point on
ice cream was a definite luxury item, but you didn't
have to be royalty to obtain it.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Yeah, that's a good way of saying it. Yeah. In
the United States, the first time they found it in
print was in a letter in seventeen forty four by
a guest of the Governor of Maryland. William Blayden or Bladen.
And there was an ad in seventeen seventy seven May
twelfth the New York Gazette for ice cream, So it
(10:18):
was for sure for sale to the people back then,
right by that time.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Yeah, George Washington had a recipe. Thomas Jefferson had a recipe. Yeah,
Dolly Madison used to like to serve it at the
White House.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
George Washington ate a lot of it, right, didn't They say?
Two hundred dollars for one summer?
Speaker 2 (10:36):
Yeah, and I failed to go to the West Egg
currency converter.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
It's a lot.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
I imagine that's a lot of money.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Yeah, but he made you know that he had guests,
and he may have shared it with his Oh, I
would hope so staff.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
You never know, especially if that's like fifty thousand dollars
worth of ice cream. I can't eat that in one summer,
even if you're Joey Chestnut, world record holder for the
most ice cream eating?
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Is he?
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (10:58):
How much did he eat?
Speaker 2 (10:59):
You know, one point eight gallons in six minutes.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
One point eight gallons in six minutes. That doesn't seem
like that much.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Oh that's a lot.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Yeah, that's pretty speedy. But hey, that's why he's Joey Chestnut.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
Plus, don't forget the brain freeze.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Oh yeah, man, do you have a thing on that
brain freeze?
Speaker 2 (11:17):
No, I've done it. Don't be dumb on it.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Though before Do you remember what it is? Like?
Speaker 2 (11:21):
What is brain freeze?
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Oh? What is brain freeze? Yeah, there's a there's a
blood vessel that runs from your brain into the roof
of your mouth. It becomes constricted, which changes the volume
of your brain, which gives you a headache, gotcha, which
is why if you place your tongue against the roof
of your mouth while you have brain freeze, it warms
(11:45):
up that blood vessel, allowing it to relax again.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Or just slight a match and hold that under your
roof of your mouth.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
That's another way to go.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yeah, you'll concentrate on that pain instead of the brain freeze. Interesting.
I don't get brain freeze because I think as an
adult you know how not to wolf it down like that.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
I've gotten it accidentally though, as an adult from time
to time. Really yeah, no, good, No, it's terrible. It's
as terrible as an adult as it is when you're
a child.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
It's probably worse than an adults just debilitating, you know. Yeah,
it's so painful. So, like you said, until around eighteen hundred,
it was mostly for the upper class. But then, like
everything else in industry in America, around that time, manufacturing
became more widespread and cheaper, and all of a sudden,
(12:34):
you had warehouses that were big freezers, and you had shipping.
You could ship things cold and frozen.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
Right, So you had like the manufacturing aspect in place.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yeah, homogenizer machines, electric power, right, mechanical refrigeration basically.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
But even still you had you had the manufacturing in place.
The distribution, though, was still limited to say, like a
store somebody who could make money by investing in some
freezer cases and then selling it to the public. It
wasn't until ice boxes became widespread in America that the
ice cream industry really blew up, because then you could
(13:12):
sell to the guy down at Pops. You could also
sell to pops next door neighbor who took it home
to keep in his freezer.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
And thank god that happened.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah, and actually, as far as making ice cream, that
the you know, the hand crank ice cream maker that
used like rock salt and all that stuff. That was
invented by a woman named Nancy Johnson in the eighteen fifties,
I think, yeah, and she patented it and apparently everybody
(13:43):
ripped her off. She sold the patent for like two
hundred bucks, and the guy who bought it from her
turned around and made a fortune off of it. But
I guess he ultimately got ripped off by a bunch
of copycats. But that same thing is still in use today,
Like you can go buy the Johnson crank that same
yeahs and crank ice cream maker and make your own
ice cream the eighteen fifties way.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Well, you mentioned take home ice cream being a big
deal to as far as it's spreading, I do have
a little modern stat Oh yeah, at least from a
few years ago, that is still the biggest part of
the market. Sixty seven percent of the overall market is
take home ice cream.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Well I saw that eighty seven percent of Americans have
ice cream in their freezer right now.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Yeah, I don't, I can't.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
It doesn't stick around no.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Like you know, if you're going to get a pint,
you might as well just plow through it and be
done with it and then get some a few weeks later.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
You're not a quitter.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
No, and I don't. I can't just keep like a
gallon of ice cream in the house.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
That's oh, that's that's a bad move.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
It's a bad move for Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Yeah, yeah, it's a bad move for everybody.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Well, no, some people have willpower.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Yeah, I guess you're right.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
You're one of them.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
I don't keep a gallon of ice cream in my house.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
Yeah, but you got willpower to a large degree, I think. Yeah, well,
you're the guy who quit smoking by just saying I'm
not going smoke anymore.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
You know.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Yeah, I guess I do have a degree of willpower.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
But I do not. So we're now in the nineteenth century,
in late eighteen hundreds, and the professional soda jerk at
soda fountain shops pops up and they make things called
like root beer floats and coke floats and soda floats, right,
which I haven't had one in a long time. I
used to love root beer floats. Yeah, but I don't
know why. I just it's not something I see very
(15:27):
much anymore. Well, you have to make it the trouble
of putting it together yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you don't.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
See floats very often anymore. I'm sure there's some places
that sell them.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
But they were good though.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Oh yeah, man, rut beer and ice cream is a
winning combination.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Yeah, I mean, I haven't had one since I was
a kid.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Probably coke works too, yeah, coke floats good too.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Root Beer floats are the thing, though, I think you're right.
And then this was for me the fact of the show.
I did not know about this religious criticism back then.
They didn't like you eating things that were so rich
and like a gluttonous thought was sinful. Yeah, well yeah
on Sundays, that is. And so in response, they took
(16:07):
out the carbonated water or the root beer or whatever
and made a Sunday And that's what I called it
a Sunday originally.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
But apparently they were like, are you mocking us? And
the Soda Jerks Union said no, no, and they changed
the spelling from Sunday to sun Dae.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Because they were mocking them, right, yes, and they were like,
this is their active retribution, changing the spelling of Sunday.
And the other cool thing too, was during World War Two.
Apparently it was the armed forces were all trying to
outstep one another in providing ice cream to the troops
in new and exciting ways because it was such a
morale booster, of course, to get ice cream when you're
(16:44):
at war, right, you know, a little taste of home.
And I think that was it the Navy that had
the ship.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Yeah, the world's first floating ice cream parlor.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
That's awesome in the Western Pacific.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Well, even before that, in World War One, ice cream
was deemed an essential food, and so ice cream manufacturers
got rations of sugar so they could keep making ice
cream during the war even though everything else is being rationed.
Speaker 1 (17:08):
Yeah, and Ed points out that during the Depression everything
kind of slowed down that was a non essential, including
ice cream, but it never went away, and through the
years it's pretty much gained in popularity. I think in
the seventies is when you started to see a little
more health conscious efforts, like the frozen yogurts and the
(17:30):
like fro yo fro yo. Right, Emily loves the fro yo.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
It's good stuff.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Like the new stuff that's really like from the Greek yogurt,
you know, oh.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Yeah, that's tangy changes everything.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Not like I think this can't be yogurt. Growing up,
was that even yogurt that was just like soft serve
ice cream.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
One is it this campy? I thought it was the
country's best yogurt tcby.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
We heard it was this can't be yogurt. Huh, maybe
it was different. I wonder it had to be the same,
Yeah TCB why Yeah?
Speaker 2 (17:58):
No, TCBY was great. I don't don't know what it was.
I think it's still around.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
It had to be yogurt because they couldn't call it that,
but it wasn't. Definitely not the tangy stuff that you
seem like at a pink berry and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
So good.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Yeah, I'm not the hugest man.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
I love that stuff. Each bite is just like it's
just a trip through a flowery meadow. Every bite, really, Yes.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Do you get the vanilla and add your stuff to it?
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Or I get the regular like the yeah, just the
I guess plain version. Yeah, and then you throw in
a little mango, some blueberries. Oh, look at you the
white yogurt chips on top. Uh huh, that's a good combination.
Or if you want to go a different route, there's like,
you know, chocolate crunch and maybe some other kind of
chocolately delicious treat on top. Man, I want some ice
(18:50):
cream so bad.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
All right, Well we'll get we'll get to the science
of ice cream, which is decidedly less yummy sounding right
after these messages. So, buddy, you said that all of
(19:20):
that stuff is frozen dairy treats, right, but not necessarily
ice cream because there's a definition, correct, Yes, So.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Ice cream is a colloid, right, yeah, which is an
unusual and complex substance. And actually quicksand is a colloid.
It's a colloidal gel. Yeah, technically remember that. But ice
cream is a colloid. And a colloid is a substance
where you have things that don't normally mix that are
(19:49):
mixed together, right, And in this case you have fat
and sugar and milk mixed together with a little bit
of air thrown in. And what you need to create
a colloid is something called an emulsifier. That's the bonding
agent that holds everything together these things that don't normally mix.
And in the earliest cases, egg yolks were the emulsifier
(20:12):
that held everything together. And of course, if you're making
ice cream at home, you can still use egg yolks
as in a multifier. It's an easy go to thing.
But if you're manufacturing it on a large scale, you're
probably using something like zan thing gum or something else
to emulsify and stabilize the whole thing to hold it together.
But yes, ice cream specifically is a colloid that has
(20:33):
undergone a very specific manufacturing process, and if you take
or add different ingredients or different steps in the process,
then you have something different, like frozen yogurt or a
saft serve ice cream or subert.
Speaker 1 (20:46):
Yeah, because frozen yogurt isn't just yogurt that they freeze,
which I never knew. It's actually during the ice cream
making process they'll put in the yogurt cultures to make
it frozen yogurt. Yeah, you don't start with yogurt, you
may yogurt doing it. Yeah, I didn't know that either.
Pretty cool, agreed, which is why every time I just
throw the yogurt in the freezer, it doesn't taste anything
(21:07):
like I want it.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
Really cold yogurt sprouts.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
The USDA actually has an ingredient standard for it to
be labeled ice cream, which has to it has to
be at least ten percent milk fat and a minimum
of six percent non fat milk solids like casins and
a gallon has to weigh four point five pounds.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
I think that's neat.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Yeah, sure, because I.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
Can't get its act together and anything, but it can
define ice cream.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Yeah. And the reason they have the minimum or the yeah,
the minimum poundage is because, as we mentioned earlier, lighter
ice cream is generally cheaper because it means there's just
more air whipped in there. And that's why Ben and
Jerry's pine is like a brick in your stomach.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Yeah. And the grabster who wrote this points out that
that's usual a general rule of thumb that the heavier
the ice cream, the higher quality it is. Yeah, but
he points out to be fair, you need to compare
like types. Sure, Like you can't compare something that's loaded
down with like brownies and Snickers with like a plain vanilla,
because you know the brownies and Snickers are going to
(22:17):
add weight and throw off your judgment.
Speaker 1 (22:20):
That's right in more ways than one. So milk fat,
there is a range of milk fat you can use.
Premium ice creams max out at about sixteen percent at
the most, but generally they're about fourteen percent. In ice
cream in general is a minimum of about ten percent.
And butterfat, which is another name for it.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Delicious, so great, Both of them sound great.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Butterfat makes it taste good and it makes it creamier
and richer. But it's interesting that they found that sixteen
percent is about as high as you want to go. Though.
It's not like, oh, just make it fifty percent, that'd
be even better.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
It's just vomit after every bite.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Well you would, and people they point out and their
head points out, you wouln't. People would't neat as much, right,
because it is so rich, and it is so calorie
rich as well, And so they found that perfect combination
of enough to make you plow through that pint and
want to get another one the next night.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Yeah, about fourteen to sixteen percent.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Yeah, yeah, that sounds pretty good when you're talking butterfat.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Ten percent for the cheap stuff that like ned Flanders
would eat, you know, yeah, totally. So. Like I said,
ice cream is a colloid and it's created by adding
egg yolk to milk, fat and sugar.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
And I think that's a custard if you use the egg.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
Yolk, right, I think you used more egg yolk.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
Yeah, one point four percent.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
At least something like that.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
I was higher in that, Yeah, frozen custard is at
least one point four percent egg yolk solids. Okay, so
they're even that's even worse for you, right, So that's
just like, well not necessarily well cholesterol wise, sure, But
the ice cream itself is specifically just this combination of
different types of ingredients with other agents that hold the
(24:09):
whole thing together that's put through this process. Right, So
when you have your sugar, when you have your cream,
your milk, and you have your eggs or whatever you're
going to use as a stabilizer or mulsifier, you put
the whole thing together, and what you have right there
is an ice cream mix. And no matter whether you're
(24:31):
making it at home or if you just bought a
factory or inherited it from your rich uncle who just
died and they left it to you, then you're going
to be following pretty much the same process using virtually
the same ingredients. Yeah, I've got an ice cream machine,
which when I looked at the process of making ice cream,
(24:52):
it's pretty much what goes on in this little thing,
Like you freeze the canister, which I found out the
hard way that's how you do it, because I was like, man,
it's not getting solid.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Oh no, way you did it without freezing the key?
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Yeah, I had no idea, Like, you just used it
at room temperage, at room temperature, and how long did
you try that for? It's fun for quite a while
before I realized what was going on.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
We luckily figured that out from the get go made
some pretty killer lemon gelato once.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yeah. So you freeze the thing and then it's the
canister actually spins and they have like a blade in
there that disrupts It introduces the air bubbles, which is
key to making ice cream nice and rich and creamy.
And it also acts as a scraper to keep ice
from forming, which is exactly what happens in big factories.
(25:38):
It's pretty much the same process.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Right, or if you're using the hand crank thing, that's
what you just said.
Speaker 1 (25:43):
The Johnson crank, right.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Yeah, what you just said listed off all of the
necessary components to making ice cream. You've got something that's
cooling it that whether that little drum that you put
in the freezer or you have ammonia filled tubes that
are freezing a tube that your mixes in. Yeah, so
you've got that right, Yeah, you.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Have, and the ammonia tubes. We should point out there's
no ammonia. It's just making the tube cold, right. The
ammonia's not being introduced to the ice cream at all.
It's just, yeah, the tube is up against the tube
that the ice cream is in, that's right. Or if
you are making it at home using a Johnson crank,
you're gonna use rock salt, right, that's right. So I
(26:26):
was kind of I didn't understand what the point of
using rock salt was, so I looked into it. We
covered a little bit within the salt episode, but not
like super in depth.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Okay. So basically, the reason that you would add rock
salt to ice is because if you just used ice,
the freezing point of ice is thirty two degrees farrentheight. Yeah,
it takes more than that, more degrees than that. Let
me put it a different way. More to the milk
freezes at a lower temperature than ice. Yes, right, So
(26:57):
when you add salt, you actually lower the freezing point
of that ice. Oh okay, Because when you're using ice,
it's a fresh water mixture. Salt water ice has a
lower freezing temperature, so you're melting it and it's melting
and refreezing and as the ice melts, the way that
it's melting is by drawing heat from something else, in
(27:19):
this case your ice cream mixture, right, right, So when
you add salt, it has to draw more heat to
melt because it has a lower freezing point freezing temperature.
So that's why you add salt. It actually lowers the
freezing point, which allows you to cool your ice cream faster. Ah, right,
So it lowers the freezing point. Yeah, milk has a
(27:41):
lower freezing point, and it makes the it draws the
heat out more quickly, so those ice crystals don't form
on the side.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
Just that simple little thing is the magic that makes
it happen.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
Yeah. We had a electric ice cream maker growing up
that was the same as the Johnson crank version, but
you just plug it in, not like the new one
that I have today, which is much.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Different, right, which you definitely plug in.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Yeah, definitely plug in and you gotta freeze that thing
apparently so funny. But my church. One of my favorite
memories growing up is my church would have ice cream
socials where everybody would bring their own homemade ice creams
and there would just be a table with like thirty
of those steel containers you know that people just take
it right out of the old you know, ice rock
(28:26):
salt beIN right and just set it on the table right,
and you would just go berserk. You know.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
As a child, we had a Johnson crank. Yeah, yeah, growing.
Speaker 1 (28:35):
Up, and you probably had to do it right because
the parents are always like that's the fun part.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
I don't I'm sure I did. I don't really remember.
I just remember the wooden bucket thing with the crank
on top. Yeah, that's what I remember. And like a
bag of rock salt, that's right, man, that we also
use for the driveway too.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Oh sure, yeah, yeah, of course we did in Atlanta.
But I remember when I saw that rock salt come out.
It was a special evening at the Brian House. Oh yeah,
So I mentioned the little paddle. It's called the dasher,
which is the blade inside the tube. And this is
if you're an ice cream factory, and like we said,
it whips it up, introducing those air bubbles and that's
(29:13):
what gives it the structure, and like I said, also
prevents the ice crystals, larger ice crystals from forming because
you don't want that. No, you want it cold, but
you don't want ice and we.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Should say by this time, you've got your ice cream mixture,
but you've already added whatever flavor you're going to add.
But if you're adding chunks of stuff, which you should,
you're not doing that quite yet. No, so you're freezing it.
What you've just created is a frozen ice cream mixture.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
It is not technically USDA standard ice cream yet. If
you stopped right here, and even if you added the
snickers or the brownies or whatever or both, what you
would have is soft serve ice cream. Yeah, the ice
cream still has another step to go through to become
regular old ice cream, and that's the hardening process.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Yeah, the hard freez. And that's basically all is is.
You take that soft serve and you have to get
it down super low, at least to zero degrees fahrenheit.
But when you're in an ice cream factory, you're going
to pump it down even lower because you're going to
be shipping it and packaging it and that you want
it to stay nice and hard throughout that whole process. Yeah,
(30:17):
and yeah, and that that's how you do it. That's
pretty much it.
Speaker 2 (30:22):
That's pretty much making ice cream.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
It's a great, great thing that everyone should.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Try making ice cream. Sure, sure, yeah, well, actually that's
funny that you say that, because whether you have a
hand crank or one of those awesome electric ones that
you are that you have to freeze the drum ahead
of time. You can also just make it at home
with like basically nothing, Yeah, just using a couple of bags. Baggies. Yeah,
(30:49):
like a bigger baggy, a smaller baggy. You make a
little rock salt mixture. And well, I won't go through
the whole recipe, but if you go to how stuff
works and look up how ice cream works, there's a
recipe for five minute ice cream that makes us a
little bit using nothing but plastic bags and the ice
cream ingredients.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Yeah, and I don't think we mentioned that it's pasteurized
along the way too. Oh, it's an important step.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Pasteurization keeps you from getting salmonilla. Yes, and if you're
making your own mix it home, you can even do
that yourself with a double boiler.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
So we'll talk a little bit about just how much
everybody loves ice cream right after this.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
All right, buddy, we will finish this out with some
stats and the like. But first we should talk about
overrun because that's an important part of ice cream because
when you're making ice cream, there's gonna be an increase
in volume as you go because you're whipping all that
air into it. Yeah, and that increase is called overrun, right,
(32:04):
and it's indicated by a percentage.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yeah, so if the volume goes from one gallon of
ice cream mixture to a completed one and a half
gallons of ice cream, yeah, it's a fifty percent over run,
which is good.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
But what the pros shoot for, like our friends at
Bluebell with great, great commercials.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
Yeah, they do make fantastic ice cream.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Yeah, it is really good. So if you are a
professional ice creamier, you might have as much as one
hundred percent overrun. But the premium ice creams are more dense,
so they have less overrun, right, which is why they're heavier.
Speaker 2 (32:41):
Yes, But you can also get into a situation where
your ice cream is dense because you're not using much
stabilizer or mulsifier. So that's not good, no, because it
makes your ice cream chewy. Oh No, So just really
dense ice cream is not necessarily the best thing. You
want a mixture between the two of somewhat dense but
(33:04):
not totally dense. But not super light ice cream. There's
a there's a balance that you want to achieve.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Yeah, because the air, like we said, is what gives
it the structure that you appreciate, and you know it's familiar. Right,
you get some Chewi ice cream, it's no good.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Noh and chuck, we were remiss in not mentioning ice
cream cones.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
Yeah, I'm not a cone guy, are you? Yes? Oh? Really?
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Oh yeah?
Speaker 1 (33:28):
So when you go to like you go out, you
get it in the cone every time?
Speaker 2 (33:32):
No?
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Just sometimes? Yes, do you get the waffle cone.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Cone? I like, I like it all except the the
I don't know what they call the non sugar cone
one styrofoam. Yeah, yeah, that's definitely the lowest on my list.
But that one's fine. But yes, I guess it does
go waffle sugar cheap cone okay as far as order
of preference goes. But no waffle cone obviously, that like
(34:00):
just adds to the whole thing, smelling like fresh made
waffle cones being made while you're ordering ice cream.
Speaker 1 (34:06):
Really, I always get the cup. She almost always do,
just for like, just to be healthier. Yeah, while I'm
eating ice cream. Well no, but I mean that's a decision.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Yeah, for sure, you know, but it is preferable in
a waffle cone. I think they're delicious.
Speaker 1 (34:20):
I might start getting a cone every now and then.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
So there's a there's an origin story to the waffle cone,
and a lot of people place it at the nineteen
oh four World's Fair in Saint Louis, that's right, and
that is probably not where ice cream cones were invented,
but that is where they were popularized.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Yeah. I mean, if you're at a World's Fair, there's
gonna be some waffling going on. It's waffle making.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
There definitely was some waffles being made, but there was
also some ice cream being served. That's documented, that's right.
And the story goes that the ice cream makers ran
out of plates or bowls or whatever they usually use,
and they turned to the waffle makers, who said, hey,
we can help you out for a fee. Yeah, let's
turn these things into some sort of cone and bam.
(35:06):
That's what happened. But it turns out that the person
who actually invented the ice cream cone was an Italian
immigrant to America named Italo Mark Please go.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Ahead, you mean Italo MARCHIONI right, Yeah, and he also
invented the ice karema a euskadima A wee alskadima, but
ice kadima. I think he was the first one to
coin that term.
Speaker 2 (35:27):
He was into ice cream big time.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Yeah, but he actually filed the patent for the cone
making machine.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
A full year ahead of the fair.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Yeah, so he generally gets credited with the invention of
the ice cream cone. Although just because you patent the
machine doesn't necessarily mean that you were the first person
who thought of the cone.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
No. Supposedly there's French cookbooks that date back to the
eighteen forties that have recipes for ice cream cones.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Oh really Yeah. Well, and we also didn't mention Jacob Fusel.
We'd probably need to mention that guy because he was
the first. He opened the first wholesale manufacturing operation in
the United States in Baltimore, and he, like some of
the greatest success stories in business, sort of got into
it by accident because he was just a dairy guy
(36:12):
who had too much cream and was like, well, I
guess I can try this ice cream thing out, And
before you knew it, he was selling more ice cream
than he was anything else. Yes, it's good for him,
good for us. Good for that's true, good for all
of us.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
So if you want to become like a Jacob Fusel type,
you can actually go, depending on where you are in
the country, to your local major university and they may
or may not depending on the size of their dairy program. Yeh,
offer like a real ice cream course.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Yeah, Penn State is known for one, correct.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Yeah, Wisconsin has one, of course. Actually, Penn State graduated
Ben and Jerry back in nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Really, yep, in ice creamery. Yes, I thought you're gonna say, like, no,
there were architects.
Speaker 2 (36:55):
Now, one of them tried to get into med school.
He graduated and couldn't afford med school. Yeah, the other
one just dropped out of college. But both of them
went together to Penn State's ice cream course and graduated.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Well, I saw. I went to their website to look
at some of their facts, and they think they said
they started their initial business with like four thousand dollars.
I saw twelve twelve grand. Yeah, well either way, that's cheap. No,
you know it is. I do have some other stats though,
lay them on us, Chuck. Yeah, it's been a while
since we've had a stat run. The majority of US
(37:32):
ice cream and frozen dessert manufacturers have been in business
for more than fifty years, and many are still family owned.
This is why you see like the bluebells and stuff
like that. R you know, there's not a lot of
upstarts like you know, like extreme ice cream.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
Right, made with mountain dew code red.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Oh god, used area approximates. And this is a few
years ago. Twenty courts per capita.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
What the US eats every year?
Speaker 1 (38:03):
No? Produced? Oh wow, yeah, they produced twenty quarts per capita.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
What's interesting, though, is the United States isn't the leader
in ice cream consumption. Did you know that? Who is
New Zealand?
Speaker 1 (38:15):
No way?
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Yeah, New Zealand per capita?
Speaker 1 (38:18):
I guess obviously, Yeah, well yes, yeah, so the average
New Zealander eats seven and a half gallons of ice
cream a year.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
Wow, Americans eat five and a half gallons. Huh yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
Apparently, Asia, the Caribbean, and Mexico and Latin America all
import ice cream as well to a large degree. And
the most popular flavor is still vanilla, which I had
to explain to Emily was a real flavor. She thinks
it's an absence of all flavors, right, like white light. Yeah,
it's like, no, vanilla's a thing.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
Yeah, and some people love it. Vanilla is still good.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
She thinks it's a waste of calories to eat anything
that's just plain vanilla.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
They're really good. Vanilla's out there that you're just like
this is this is all that's needed.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Like super creamy, like vanilla bean yummy. Yeah, and then
chocolate chip miant and cookies and cream followed as the
next most popular. I'm surprised playing chocolate is not on
the list.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
I saw a grub hub survey. They did most popular
ice cream flavors by flavor ordered, and vanilla was number one,
but green tea was number two. And I was thinking
about it, and it's probably because, like at a Japanese restaurant, Yeah,
(39:34):
you don't really have any other options besides you know,
green tea.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Yeah. I've never had the green tea ice cream as a.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
Good Oh my god.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
Yeah really yeah, dude, I don't eat deserted restaurants.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
It's so good.
Speaker 1 (39:47):
Yeah, I'm gonna have to start.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
If you go to a good Japanese restaurant, they bring
it out, whether you asked for it or not, part
of the meal. I know, it'll be like Green Tea
or Red Bean is another one too. That's a pretty
good ice cream, but Green Tea fully has it destroyed?
Speaker 1 (40:01):
That sounds delicious?
Speaker 2 (40:02):
Yes it is.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
I'm hungry.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Yeah. So if you want to know more about ice
cream and to get this awesome, really easy five minute
ice cream recipe, go to HowStuffWorks dot com and type
ice cream in the search bar. And since I said
search bar, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
I'm going to call this first of two scientific method emails,
so you're gonna hear one here and then one in
the next one Awesome because these are great. I was
super proud of that one, and we got a lot
of kudos from scientists, which is always nice. Hey guys,
my name is Danny. I'm twenty three and recently graduated
with a degree in astronomy and physics. Now work at
(40:43):
an aerospace company in LA on a space mission concept
called the Star Shade. Where you go, Danny, I know
the Star Shade is a really awesome piece of tech
that allows will allow us to image planets around other
stars and ultimately search for life outside of our Solar system.
I'm writing because just listening to the podcast on the
scientific method, and as someone whose job regularly involves the
(41:04):
scientific method, I want to express my appreciation for you
guys recording such a great discussion on the subject. It's
extremely important to give the public the opportunity to learn
about science. I think that your podcast is a great
vehicle by which this is achieved. So thanks. I remember
once in the show, you guys let it slip that
you get a few hundred emails a week, so statistically speaking,
I'm twice as likely to become a millionaire than to
(41:26):
get my email read.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
On the show, I saw that and I felt like
he was baiting us.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
Oh, he totally was, and it worked. But in the
case that some miracle happens and you do read it,
I'd love if you could plug the astrophysics blog my
friends and I have. It's called Astrophysics Unleashed and can
be found online at astrophysics dash unleashed dot tumblr dot com.
And it's a place where we seek to expose the
(41:50):
beauty hidden within astronomy and modern science. It's a great
place for the inquiring mind to find food for thought
or to ask questions. So that is from Danny, and
he said I want to shout out to Jerry j E. R.
Ibo's afraid I'd spell her name wrong. Hopefully that is right.
Tell her that I have no idea what she's like
at all, but I'd be willing to bet that she's
(42:10):
really cool.
Speaker 2 (42:11):
That is nice, man. Usually people have like a better
chance of getting struck by lightning. And it's spelling Jerry's
name correctly. But he nailed it well.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
And here's a spoiler. The other scientists said the exact
same thing about spelling her name wrong, and he spelled
it right.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
Wow. So how about that, man, scientists or smart If
you want to get in touch with us, you can
send us an email to Stuff Podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com,
and you can join us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com. Stuff you Should Know
is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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