June 2, 2018 • 29 mins
We're revisiting a yummy topic from 2013! There is actually some disagreement about the actual origin point of ice cream, but almost everyone agrees it's delicious. The real origin story is a culmination of many cultures and ingredients coming together to fill the need for a frosty treat.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, Happy Saturday. Everybody, at least in theory summer is
here for most of our listeners, so this seems like
the perfect time to talk about something cold and delicious
that means ice cream. In today's episode, which has thrown
back in, referenced the mythology of George Washington's wooden teeth,
which a number of folks wrote in afterwards to correct.
(00:22):
So yes, we're aware that George Washington's false teeth were
not really made of wood, which is why we framed
it as mythology. They were made of things like lead, ivory,
and real human teeth, probably including some of his own
teeth that he had saved when they were extracted, and
possibly teeth that he purchased from people who were enslaved
at Mount Vernon. Welcome to Stuff you missed in history
(00:48):
class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast, And I'm Tracy Vie Wilson UH and
I have the following question to pose. Who doesn't like
ice cream? I can think of a lot of people
who don't like I really people who are lactose intolerant.
(01:11):
But it might not be that they don't like it,
it's just something they've had to eliminate when for reason,
when I was in massage school, our traditional Chinese medicine
teacher and told us that in traditional Chinese medicine, ice
cream is a terrible food to eat because it's very cold,
and it has lots of sugar and milk, and all
of those things together from that perspective, is a bad combo.
(01:35):
I'm almost suspicious of people that don't like ice cream. Yeah,
I cannot. I really can only think of one or
two people that I've ever met. One is the brother
of a friend, and he has many suspicious dislikes in
the food arena, Like he also doesn't like cheesecakes, So
come on, we can't trust that person. Um, But I
love it, and most people I know love it. I
(01:57):
do like ice cream. Did you know that one point
six billion gallons of ice cream are produced in the
US annually. That is a lot of ice cream. Um.
And as we know, you know, the serving size on
a pine of ice cream that's listed has been comedian
fodder for years and years and years. It's interesting, I
will say before we get deep into this podcast, because
(02:18):
we're talking today obviously about the history of ice cream. UM,
that a lot of it after a certain point kind
of centers on the US. While I know that people
eat ice cream the world over, I think we're kind
of considered the nexus point. I don't. I think it's
kind of gotten lumped in with Americana, Like you have
your slice of apple pie and there's ice cream on
(02:39):
the side pie all the mode. Well, and I definitely
there are a lot of cultural ice cream things, Like
you know, I grew up in in the Bible Belt
in the church. Ice cream social. Yeah, an annual thing
that everybody looked forward to you for a really long time.
And then you have the whole preponderance of ice cream
parlors that will talk about later and how that sort
(03:02):
of became a place for people to go and hang out.
Like ice cream became a really social thing in the
United States and not just like a food to eat
for dessert. Yeah, it's really it's an iconic food I
think in in the US for sure. Uh, it's just
kind of fascinating. I'm now wondering if we have a
national dessert and if ice cream is it. But I
(03:24):
don't know, Uh, do you have a favorite flavor? Oh?
I will eat chocolate ice cream of course all day.
Ye see, I don't love chocolate. My mother in law
really loves chocolate ice cream, and I think she's suspicious
of me that I'm like, that doesn't work for me. Um. Yeah.
When I had my wisdom teeth removed, my dad like
woke me up in the parking lot at the grocery
store while I was, you know, still kind of under
(03:47):
some anesthesia. Still, He's like, what kind of ice cream
do you want? And I was like, Chalker, that's so pathetic.
It was very pathetic. I also feel like I should
give a quick shout out to one of my favorite
ice cream places in the world, which is in Canada.
It's outside Vancouver. I think it's technically in Burnaby called
Kaza Gelato, and they have hundreds of flavors of ice
(04:08):
cream and they do really wild That is where I
had dirty and ice cream, which I have to keep
on a lid on it, and they keep it far
away from all the other ice creams because it makes
everything smells so bad. But it's delicious. And that's where
I had parent Gorgonzola ice cream for the first time,
and they do dandelion ice cream almost any flavor. I
think they've tried to do, and I love that place. Like, um,
(04:29):
I just to me, it was like going into the
factory of dreams at that point. Yeah, what I can
eat all of these things. Oh my goodness. When I
was a kid, there was an ice cream place at
the beach that we went to every summer, and my
brother and my cousin and I would all get these. Uh.
It was bubble bubblegum flavored ice cream that had little
pieces of I love that stuff. It's like chloeing Lee
(04:52):
sweet and I love it and a terrible color, like
not a color that's found in nature, but delicious. Yeah. Well,
and all these things that I associate with ice cream,
a lot of them are things that are done as
a family or in a group, or it is a
very social food, ex unless you're eating it by yourself
straight from the carton in front of the television, which
(05:12):
I also do. Oh yeah, for sure, I've definitely done that. Uh.
But this all makes us wonder where did ice cream
come from in the first place? Uh? And this is
actually a pretty unresolved question. There are many different theories. Um,
there's a lot of disagreement about the actual origin point
(05:32):
of ice cream, and some of that problem lies in semantics.
Some food historians will qualify ice cream by a certain
set of criteria, and those may not be the same
criteria or definition that another food you will use. And
some people, for example, separate ice desserts out by the
inclusion or exclusion of dairy. But even then the origins
are hazy. Um. There's a U. S D. A standard
(05:55):
that's current that says for a food to qualify as
ice cream, it needs to contain at least ten percent
milk fat, a minimum of six percent non fat milk solids,
and a gallon has to weigh at least four point
five pounds. But that's not really um applicable to the
historical record because those were not in place, and we're
(06:16):
still trying to trace the origins. So there are many
different and interesting stories that have circulated, and we won't
even cover all of them, but we will do a
list um about the origins of ice cream. So one
of the earliest is a biblical mention. There's a reference
to King Solomon having iced drinks during harvest time, which
(06:37):
sounds like a wonderful idea, um, but it also doesn't
sound that much like ice cream. But that's mentioned in
the various accounts of ice cream history is sort of
a proto ice cream tree, and Alexander the Great is
said to have enjoyed snow and ice that were flavored
with honey or nectar, which sounds more like a snow
(06:57):
cone but still is sometimes bandied about as antent will
origin point. I think it sounds like snow cream, which
we talked about in our prior podcast pop Stuff, and
people were horrified that people would do that. Uh. In
the first century CE, Roman emperor Nero is said to
have gotten his slaves to bring him snow from the
(07:18):
mountains so that it could be combined with fruit, again
similar to the Alexander the Great thing. Uh. And then
Marco Polo allegedly brought back a recipe for a frozen
dessert from his travels in Asia when he returned to
Italy uh. And it's believed that this more closely resembled
sherbet than an ice cream uh. And some people say
(07:39):
that it's the genesis point for ice cream and gelato
and similar frozen treats developing in Italy in the mid
fift hundreds, It's possible that Catherine de Medici introduced some
kind of ice cream to France when she married Henry.
The second yeah, that she carried it over. So those
are all different. I have read different accounts. The point
to each one of those things is this is where
(08:00):
ice cream started. But uh, and they all may or
may not have truth to them. They're all, like I said,
pointed out in various discussions of ice cream as like
this is our ice cream really got its start. There's
so much variation, and many of them don't involve dairy,
so a lot of people will discount them um or
some people will support them, depending on their beliefs and
(08:22):
definitions um. And also I think that in some cases
a little bit of like cultural pride comes into it.
There are people in France that will say it came
from France, people from Italy that will say it came
from Italy, people from China that will say it came
from China. Where we're about to discuss because that often
gets UH believed in. But the truth really is probably
(08:43):
that there were many people wanting a delightful, tasty, cool treat,
particularly in hot weather. And so I think a lot
of different techniques and cultural desires kind of went into
the ice cream that we eat today. And how it developed.
(09:05):
The most favored origin story for ice cream is that
it comes from China, So there are some references to
a milk and rice mixture packed into snow for freezing
as early as two hundred BC. Then during China's Tang
period from six eighteen to nine oh seven, it's believed
that a version of ice cream was popular with the
(09:26):
nation's rulers, and they actually had dedicated iceman. These men
their entire job was to keep the palace supplied with ice,
and they would bring that ice from the mountains and
then it would be combined with a fermented milk which
is called kumis uh and camphor and flour. And the
dairy element could be sourced from a number of different animals.
(09:47):
It could be um, cow milk, goat milk, or buffalo milk,
and the camphor was used to enhance the texture and flavor.
But that makes me have question marks in my head
and my stomach because it seems like it would taste
like mothballs right well, And I also wonder um, as
we talked about in our episode on the History of Cheese,
(10:09):
how a lot of adults can't tolerate lactose uh because
they haven't been there, their digestive systems haven't been gradually
accustomed to it. In in Chinese cultures and a lot
of Asian cultures, lactose intolerance is a lot more prevalent,
so milk is not a big ingredient in a lot
(10:30):
of Asian cooking. Yeah. So I kind of wonder whether
either the fermenting process took down the amount of lactose,
which probably actually I think no, I think yeast Houston
Brewing and Fermenting does not eat lactose. I'm super curious
about this now, me too. It's fascinating to think about.
And I was surprised that it is the most favored
(10:52):
story since we don't associate Asia and China specifically with
a lot of dairy consumption. That's kind of interesting. Uh.
And it could be that it was so rare that
that was part of why it became a yummy, palatial
like special treat, that there was some level of um
um exclusivity to it that made it appealing. For all
(11:13):
we know, it totally upset their stomach, a special treat
that made you feel ill afered. But once all of
these ingredients were combined, they would pack the mixture into
these metal tubes and then submerge them in an ice
pool for freezing, which is kind of cool to think about.
I wonder if anybody does that style of ice cream
(11:34):
making today. I would try it for sure, even if
it does taste like muffles. I don't know. If I
would try camp for ice cream. I would try it.
I'm adventurous. I'll try almost anything. Yeah, somehow I would
be more inclined to eat bugs than camp for ice cream.
But then there is a lot of things that happened
(11:54):
having to do with, um, the area of Turkey and
Arab cultures, and how that kind of slowly gets ice
cream and frozen treats into Europe, Europe and the European countries,
and then it kind of takes a lot of big
steps towards being the dessert that we know today. Arab
people's are said to have drunken iced slushy like sherbet
(12:17):
style drink, and medieval times, uh, this was normally fruit flavored,
and apparently it spread to several European cultures because it
was so refreshing and tasty. Yeah, the travelers that would
travel around the Mediterranean and do trades with other countries
kind of picked up this habit of drinking it brought
it right back home with them. And one of the
supporting elements for the belief that ice cream true, you know,
(12:40):
true ice cream I'm making the air quotes originated in Italy,
comes from their knowledge of chilling various beverages in the
mid to late fifteen hundreds, using a slurry of saltpeter
and snow to like submerge things and quickly almost flash
freeze them. And we know this was used for wine
to cool it down, but it's believed that this process
(13:03):
may have also been applied to chilling these slushy sherbets
that they had discovered and picked up as a habit
when they were traveling uh And they were sometimes called
Turkish sorbets. And the word sorbet is one that in
different European cultures. As this history goes on, it really
gets traded around in ways that are not consistent. Different
things were being called sorbet that we would define differently
(13:25):
I think today. So that's a tricky one. If you're
reading any of the the passages or sources we list
in the show notes, just know that sorbet is a
word that gets kind of tossed around without consistency. Yeah. Well,
and if you've if you've ever seen, you know, an
old fashioned ice cream maker do its thing, you can
sort of see a seed of that process and this
(13:47):
whole idea of using a slurry of saltpeter and snow
to cool stuff down. Yeah, so they were onto it
early sorbet as we know, it was invented when these
icy drinks, uh were made into hard frozen to eats
that incorporated sugar. The man who gets the credit for
this is Antonio Latini, who was working as a steward
to the Chief Minister of the Spanish Viceroy in Naples
(14:10):
in the late sixteen hundreds. He further experimented and added
dairy to the mix. In Latini's book Scalco ala Moderna,
which means carver to the modern, He included recipes for
lemon strawberry, sour cherry, chocolate and cinnamon ice, and a
milk ice that's often cited as the first two ice
cream recipe. I would eat any of those. They sound
(14:32):
very interesting. Um, cinnamon I sounded really interesting to me,
mostly because my husband really loved cinnamon. And in six
six a cafe in Paris opened UH. Sometimes it's called
Il Procope, sometimes La Procope, sometimes Cafe Procope, but it's
proprietor was actually Sicilian. It was a man named Francesco
Procopio de Cortelli UH, and it offered a variety of
(14:55):
ice treats, and some historians credit him with bringing gelato
to France, but others say his cafe only offered very
cold beverages, so there's some discrepancy about what was really
on the menu and whether he was importing ice cream
to France. Um. But what's really interesting is that that
cafe is still open today, so you can go visit it.
(15:17):
It really has the established six six sign above it,
and you can go. Let's go now, all right, get
in the car. The French had already been experimenting with
ice cream like treats, specifically a concoction called fromage, which
is very similar to ice cream. This was not made
with cheese, even though it has the same word as cheese.
(15:39):
It's not completely clear why the two words share the
same name, but it's possible that the frozen dairy dessert
was chilled in cheese molds. As fromage developed and started
to be referred to as nij which is the French
word for snow, and then gloss, which is what it's
now called today. It became incredibly popular throughout the country,
(16:00):
and in six which was the same year Latini's cookbook
for Isis came out, a French cookbook for similar desserts
entitled La Maison regulas which is a well ordered home,
was written by Nicholas Audeger, and it was touted as
being quote the true method for making all sorts of
water essences and liqueurs strong and refreshing in the Italian style.
(16:24):
Odege's book was much clearer in its recipes and instructions,
and it's spelled out exactly how to make cram glass
a which is frizzing cream. The use of a bucket
inside of another bucket with the gap between the two
filled with ice and salt is described, as well as
the method for stirring the mixture in the interior bucket
as it freezes until it has the consistency of snow,
(16:47):
which is really how I scream sti't get made, yep,
unless you're making it in a funky science experiment, which
is also fun or if you're in a factory. But
when people have their home machines. That's it's really the
same deal going on. Um and auDA Jay's book you
can actually read online if you are fluent in French.
We will have that link in the show notes. Uh,
(17:08):
my French is not good enough to follow a recipe
of that nature. It's kind of mediocre. Uh. But then
sort of an interesting thing happened, and this is sort
of the point where it becomes a very American treat.
So while ice cream existed in Europe for many years prior,
and the recipes and the love of the treat traveled
across the Atlantic with the colonists in the seventeen forties,
(17:30):
there is also this kind of wacky mythological tale that
attributes the invention of ice cream to Martha Washington. Uh.
The story claims that she left a bowl of sweet
cream outdoors overnight and accidentally stumbled upon the creation when
she discovered the forgotten dish, which had frozen the next morning.
And of course this is completely untrue. We have instances
(17:53):
of ice cream going on way before that. And there's
actually the first account of ice cream in America is
in a her from seventeen forty four, which was written
by a guest of William Bladen, who was the governor
of Maryland, UM. And this guest was writing of the
time that he visited with the politician and what was
served while he was there, and ice cream was one
(18:14):
of the things too. So even though Martha Washington did
not invent ice cream, George Washington did love it. Like
that's an understatement. I think he really super loved it.
In the seventeen eighty four Ledger for Mount Vernon, there's
a record of an ice cream machine being acquired for
the sum of one pound, thirteen shillings and threepence. And
(18:34):
even with his own ice cream turns at home. In
seventeen ninety, George Washington is said to have spent two
hundred dollars over the course of one summer on ice
cream at a local shop, which is apparently close to
a hundred thousand dollars of today's money. May have contributed
to the wooden teeth mythology. Well, And it's funny when
(18:54):
I was talking to my husband about this, because I
was blathering on about how interesting I found it, he
or if it wasn't, because he had the wooden teeth,
ice cream was a yummy thing. He could easily eat
because it would melt in his mouth. I think everyone
had I mean, definitely everyone had terrible teeth at the time,
but George Washington's terrible teeth are are infamous. Shortly after
(19:23):
Washington's death, an inventory of Mount Vernon was made and
numerous ice ice cream supplies turn up. In that inventory.
There were two Pewter ice cream pots as well as
numerous special ice cream serving dishes. Ice Cream was a
favorite treat for both the company, who would you know,
arrive and stay there and for the family in residence. Yeah,
(19:44):
when they had state dinners, you were pretty much going
to get ice cream as dessert. Uh. It was really like,
I can't stress enough how much George Washington loved it.
But he was not the only person. Thomas Jefferson had
his own recipe for vanilla that he had handwritten now
and he served it with Savoy cookies. And you can
actually see that handwritten recipe online. It's part of the
(20:05):
American Treasures of the Library Congress, and we'll link to
that in our show notes. And he is Jefferson is
said to have maintained multiple ice houses so that he
could constantly be storing ice for making more ice cream.
As well as storing his ice cream once it had
been made. That he was just stockpiling ice cream supplies
and ice cream. I'm also in favor of a giant
(20:27):
ice cream stockpile. The Lincoln's were also big fans Mary Todd.
Lincoln would frequently host strawberry parties, which will get togethers
centered around dessert service and co starring with the ice
with the strawberries was ice cream. Yeah. So, uh, ice
cream has a very favored history with American presidents and
even more modern presidents have definitely sung the praises of
(20:49):
ice cream and we all love it. It's good, I'm
telling you. Uh. And perhaps because of the popularity with
the early political leaders, ice cream was enthusiastically embraced in
the US, But up until the early eighteen hundreds it
was kind of a fancy pants dessert for wealthy people
and high society types. Yeah. If average people cannot afford
(21:12):
to keep things cold and uh and to get all
the ice and the sugar and everything else that are
needed to make it, then it does make it a
very exclusive food. Yeah. So then when you think of
people maintaining multiple ice houses to keep their stockpile, that's
not something most people would have had access to, but
the insulated ice house was invented around the turn of
(21:34):
the century, so that meant that more people could have
ice cream on hand, whereas prior to that, only wealthy
people could really maintain an ice house because they would
have to have a constant ice coming in and constant
management of the situation in the temperature. Yeah, it really
It reminds me of the possibly apocryphal story about why
sweet tea is so popular in the South. It had
(21:54):
to do with if you could afford the sugar and
the ice needed to make sweet tea. You're doing all right, Yeah,
it's a little bit of a calling card of your aristocracy.
Would you like to come over and have sweet tea?
On my part the money for that On the Verandah
in the early eighteen forties, New Jersey housewife Nancy Johnson
(22:16):
made ice cream in the normal way, in a metal
bucket packed with ice and salt. It was great, but
this was really, as we've talked about, a time consuming
and it's hard to keep things consistent when you're having
to stir them constantly. So she invented the hand cranked
ice cream churn and her new artificial freezer was patented
on September and the basic design continues to be popular
(22:40):
now with pretty minimal changes. Yeah, ice cream churns that
you by now are so similar to that original one.
Obviously the components are made of more modern materials, but yeah,
the same. But you can also still buy hand crank
can there. You take a little more work, you earn
that ice cream, which is probably good, but um, yeah,
(23:01):
it's it's retained its function and it's continued to be
about that same thing that the Italians were doing with
ice and salt mixed together surrounding this thing surrounding the
dairy bucket so they could kind of quickly freeze it.
So little change, don't mess with perfection. The first commercial
(23:22):
ice cream factory was opened in eighteen fifty by Jacob Fustle,
and he was a dairyman from Baltimore and he wanted
to make use of the surplus cream that his dairy
was producing, which you know, once they had cleared that off,
they had to use it very quickly, so it went
into making ice cream, and so ice cream at that point,
you know transition. It became not just a home main
(23:43):
treat that you would be using your hand crank for
but an actual industry, which, as we know, has flourished. Yes,
eighteen seventy four saw the first ice cream soda shop
in the United States as well as the origin of
the soda jerk. So the late Victorian and Edwardian era
saw a real explosion in ice cream popularity. By the
(24:03):
nineteen teens, all of America was covered in ice cream shops.
And another thing that may have contributed to ice cream
sort of being so associated with the US is that
during World War Two, ice cream was like a huge
part of the morale efforts of the U. S. Armed Forces,
Like it was literally listed as a line item in
their morale budget, like that they had to have rations
(24:25):
of ice cream for the soldiers. The military served ice
cream to the troops, and they even established this blows
my mind in the most wonderful way, a floating ice
cream parlor in the Western Pacific that would serve the soldiers.
So it was like a floating treat factory. It was
on a barge and it had to be towed by
other ships. It wasn't self powered, but its only job
(24:48):
was to produce ice cream for soldiers. Uh, which is
really fascinating and interesting. Uh. And it was quite expensive apparently,
and when the war concluded, ice cream was a huge
part of the festive tis. From the end of the
war through the seventies, prepackaged ice cream started to grow
as something that you could buy at the supermarket. And
(25:10):
it's the planted most of the quaint ice cream shops
that had become popular in the early dreds. Yeah, and
of course that sort of started this big shift that
we've witnessed in the last couple of decades where some
people would say the quality goes down when you're getting
um ice cream at the supermarket. But then there has
also been this sort of growth of the boutique industry
(25:30):
of these smaller ice cream shops again that are kind
of more specialized, their artisan ice creams. Now. I've visited
two of such shops over Fourth of July weekend when
it was extremely hot in Boston. Yeah. A good fresh
ice cream, like a homemade ice cream, is good stuff. Uh. Yeah,
(25:51):
And we have these specialty shops all over the US
now and in other countries as well. But of course
we owe all of these yummy treats were enjoying with
all of our mix ins to China. Or Nero or
Marco Polo or King Solomon, depending on whose version of
the story you believe in which definition you would heere
to in terms of historical context. Ice cream, I love it.
(26:16):
I was just immensely relieved the time this particularly, like
I can understand how it became a popular thing to
serve ice cream during the harvest, or to people who
were traveling in hot weather. Um, just because of having
walked to a place in the ninety degree heat and
then walked back while drinking a frozen drink, and man,
(26:40):
was a different experience. The trip back was so much
better than the trip out, and the whole all I
had been able to think was it's so hot. It's
so hot. And then on the way back, I was like,
I'm drinking delicious. This was this was a like a
sorbet that was yeah, a frozen tree. It's shocking how
active they are and just kind of cooling you down
(27:02):
and making you feel good on a day that is sweltering.
We um. Anybody that runs knows probably about the Peachtree
road Race, which is a huge race here in Atlanta
on the fourth of July. It's like up to sixty
runners now, so it's quite mammoth. Uh. And after you finish,
you kind of have to go through this cattle shoot
set up where they march everybody up this one street
(27:23):
to get back to public transportation. And smartly, a few
years ago, we have a local um ice cream popsicle.
It's not all ice cream, but a popsicle vendor called
King of Pops, and they had the very smart business
idea to start setting up rolling carts along that route
because you can't go off of that route, like they
kind of keep you cordoned in and police block off
(27:44):
other streets so you can't kind of verge out and
have a mass. So it's just like all these people
marching by, and it's so hard to resist. You just
pull out your money or your credit card and you're like, yes,
please give me the pops and it makes it so
much better than if you were just walking without them. Yeah,
we were walking to Fenway Park on the fourth where
people ate lots of ice cream to keep cool. Um,
(28:06):
and I was thinking about the Peach Gree Road race
and how it must have been miserable. Yeah, I did
not run it this year. I usually do, but I
opted not to this year. Um partially because I thought
about that horrible march back to public transportation, and I
dislike it so much that I was like, that's let
somebody else have the entry. There's like a whole lottery
(28:26):
system to even get into the race anymore because it's
gotten so big. Uh. And apparently there was so much
rain this year that the park that you kind of
have to travel through to get done, get your stuff,
and then leave was covered in mud. So I was
glad I missed it, but kudos to everybody that ran
it because it was sweltery and muggy. I ran just
(28:48):
not there. But I did not have ice cream afterwards,
so that's my punishment like now, and I did not
have ice cream at Fenway Park, just because when the
ice cream was coming by, it was late enough in
the game game that we were starting to think about
when you're gonna leave, Yes, at which point I did
get a frozen coffee drink Yo also delicious. Thank you
(29:14):
so much for joining us for this Saturday Classic. Since
this is out of the archive, if you heard an
email address or a Facebook U r L or something
similar during the course of the show, that may be
obsolete now. So here is our current contact information. We
are at History podcast at how stuff works dot com,
and then we're at Missed in the History. All over
(29:34):
social media that is our name on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Pinterest,
and Instagram. Thanks again for listening. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
Hey, Happy Saturday. Everybody, at least in theory summer is
here for most of our listeners, so this seems like
the perfect time to talk about something cold and delicious
that means ice cream. In today's episode, which has thrown
back in, referenced the mythology of George Washington's wooden teeth,
which a number of folks wrote in afterwards to correct.
(00:22):
So yes, we're aware that George Washington's false teeth were
not really made of wood, which is why we framed
it as mythology. They were made of things like lead, ivory,
and real human teeth, probably including some of his own
teeth that he had saved when they were extracted, and
possibly teeth that he purchased from people who were enslaved
at Mount Vernon. Welcome to Stuff you missed in history
(00:48):
class from how Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast, And I'm Tracy Vie Wilson UH and
I have the following question to pose. Who doesn't like
ice cream? I can think of a lot of people
who don't like I really people who are lactose intolerant.
(01:11):
But it might not be that they don't like it,
it's just something they've had to eliminate when for reason,
when I was in massage school, our traditional Chinese medicine
teacher and told us that in traditional Chinese medicine, ice
cream is a terrible food to eat because it's very cold,
and it has lots of sugar and milk, and all
of those things together from that perspective, is a bad combo.
(01:35):
I'm almost suspicious of people that don't like ice cream. Yeah,
I cannot. I really can only think of one or
two people that I've ever met. One is the brother
of a friend, and he has many suspicious dislikes in
the food arena, Like he also doesn't like cheesecakes, So
come on, we can't trust that person. Um, But I
love it, and most people I know love it. I
(01:57):
do like ice cream. Did you know that one point
six billion gallons of ice cream are produced in the
US annually. That is a lot of ice cream. Um.
And as we know, you know, the serving size on
a pine of ice cream that's listed has been comedian
fodder for years and years and years. It's interesting, I
will say before we get deep into this podcast, because
(02:18):
we're talking today obviously about the history of ice cream. UM,
that a lot of it after a certain point kind
of centers on the US. While I know that people
eat ice cream the world over, I think we're kind
of considered the nexus point. I don't. I think it's
kind of gotten lumped in with Americana, Like you have
your slice of apple pie and there's ice cream on
(02:39):
the side pie all the mode. Well, and I definitely
there are a lot of cultural ice cream things, Like
you know, I grew up in in the Bible Belt
in the church. Ice cream social. Yeah, an annual thing
that everybody looked forward to you for a really long time.
And then you have the whole preponderance of ice cream
parlors that will talk about later and how that sort
(03:02):
of became a place for people to go and hang out.
Like ice cream became a really social thing in the
United States and not just like a food to eat
for dessert. Yeah, it's really it's an iconic food I
think in in the US for sure. Uh, it's just
kind of fascinating. I'm now wondering if we have a
national dessert and if ice cream is it. But I
(03:24):
don't know, Uh, do you have a favorite flavor? Oh?
I will eat chocolate ice cream of course all day.
Ye see, I don't love chocolate. My mother in law
really loves chocolate ice cream, and I think she's suspicious
of me that I'm like, that doesn't work for me. Um. Yeah.
When I had my wisdom teeth removed, my dad like
woke me up in the parking lot at the grocery
store while I was, you know, still kind of under
(03:47):
some anesthesia. Still, He's like, what kind of ice cream
do you want? And I was like, Chalker, that's so pathetic.
It was very pathetic. I also feel like I should
give a quick shout out to one of my favorite
ice cream places in the world, which is in Canada.
It's outside Vancouver. I think it's technically in Burnaby called
Kaza Gelato, and they have hundreds of flavors of ice
(04:08):
cream and they do really wild That is where I
had dirty and ice cream, which I have to keep
on a lid on it, and they keep it far
away from all the other ice creams because it makes
everything smells so bad. But it's delicious. And that's where
I had parent Gorgonzola ice cream for the first time,
and they do dandelion ice cream almost any flavor. I
think they've tried to do, and I love that place. Like, um,
(04:29):
I just to me, it was like going into the
factory of dreams at that point. Yeah, what I can
eat all of these things. Oh my goodness. When I
was a kid, there was an ice cream place at
the beach that we went to every summer, and my
brother and my cousin and I would all get these. Uh.
It was bubble bubblegum flavored ice cream that had little
pieces of I love that stuff. It's like chloeing Lee
(04:52):
sweet and I love it and a terrible color, like
not a color that's found in nature, but delicious. Yeah. Well,
and all these things that I associate with ice cream,
a lot of them are things that are done as
a family or in a group, or it is a
very social food, ex unless you're eating it by yourself
straight from the carton in front of the television, which
(05:12):
I also do. Oh yeah, for sure, I've definitely done that. Uh.
But this all makes us wonder where did ice cream
come from in the first place? Uh? And this is
actually a pretty unresolved question. There are many different theories. Um,
there's a lot of disagreement about the actual origin point
(05:32):
of ice cream, and some of that problem lies in semantics.
Some food historians will qualify ice cream by a certain
set of criteria, and those may not be the same
criteria or definition that another food you will use. And
some people, for example, separate ice desserts out by the
inclusion or exclusion of dairy. But even then the origins
are hazy. Um. There's a U. S D. A standard
(05:55):
that's current that says for a food to qualify as
ice cream, it needs to contain at least ten percent
milk fat, a minimum of six percent non fat milk solids,
and a gallon has to weigh at least four point
five pounds. But that's not really um applicable to the
historical record because those were not in place, and we're
(06:16):
still trying to trace the origins. So there are many
different and interesting stories that have circulated, and we won't
even cover all of them, but we will do a
list um about the origins of ice cream. So one
of the earliest is a biblical mention. There's a reference
to King Solomon having iced drinks during harvest time, which
(06:37):
sounds like a wonderful idea, um, but it also doesn't
sound that much like ice cream. But that's mentioned in
the various accounts of ice cream history is sort of
a proto ice cream tree, and Alexander the Great is
said to have enjoyed snow and ice that were flavored
with honey or nectar, which sounds more like a snow
(06:57):
cone but still is sometimes bandied about as antent will
origin point. I think it sounds like snow cream, which
we talked about in our prior podcast pop Stuff, and
people were horrified that people would do that. Uh. In
the first century CE, Roman emperor Nero is said to
have gotten his slaves to bring him snow from the
(07:18):
mountains so that it could be combined with fruit, again
similar to the Alexander the Great thing. Uh. And then
Marco Polo allegedly brought back a recipe for a frozen
dessert from his travels in Asia when he returned to
Italy uh. And it's believed that this more closely resembled
sherbet than an ice cream uh. And some people say
(07:39):
that it's the genesis point for ice cream and gelato
and similar frozen treats developing in Italy in the mid
fift hundreds, It's possible that Catherine de Medici introduced some
kind of ice cream to France when she married Henry.
The second yeah, that she carried it over. So those
are all different. I have read different accounts. The point
to each one of those things is this is where
(08:00):
ice cream started. But uh, and they all may or
may not have truth to them. They're all, like I said,
pointed out in various discussions of ice cream as like
this is our ice cream really got its start. There's
so much variation, and many of them don't involve dairy,
so a lot of people will discount them um or
some people will support them, depending on their beliefs and
(08:22):
definitions um. And also I think that in some cases
a little bit of like cultural pride comes into it.
There are people in France that will say it came
from France, people from Italy that will say it came
from Italy, people from China that will say it came
from China. Where we're about to discuss because that often
gets UH believed in. But the truth really is probably
(08:43):
that there were many people wanting a delightful, tasty, cool treat,
particularly in hot weather. And so I think a lot
of different techniques and cultural desires kind of went into
the ice cream that we eat today. And how it developed.
(09:05):
The most favored origin story for ice cream is that
it comes from China, So there are some references to
a milk and rice mixture packed into snow for freezing
as early as two hundred BC. Then during China's Tang
period from six eighteen to nine oh seven, it's believed
that a version of ice cream was popular with the
(09:26):
nation's rulers, and they actually had dedicated iceman. These men
their entire job was to keep the palace supplied with ice,
and they would bring that ice from the mountains and
then it would be combined with a fermented milk which
is called kumis uh and camphor and flour. And the
dairy element could be sourced from a number of different animals.
(09:47):
It could be um, cow milk, goat milk, or buffalo milk,
and the camphor was used to enhance the texture and flavor.
But that makes me have question marks in my head
and my stomach because it seems like it would taste
like mothballs right well, And I also wonder um, as
we talked about in our episode on the History of Cheese,
(10:09):
how a lot of adults can't tolerate lactose uh because
they haven't been there, their digestive systems haven't been gradually
accustomed to it. In in Chinese cultures and a lot
of Asian cultures, lactose intolerance is a lot more prevalent,
so milk is not a big ingredient in a lot
(10:30):
of Asian cooking. Yeah. So I kind of wonder whether
either the fermenting process took down the amount of lactose,
which probably actually I think no, I think yeast Houston
Brewing and Fermenting does not eat lactose. I'm super curious
about this now, me too. It's fascinating to think about.
And I was surprised that it is the most favored
(10:52):
story since we don't associate Asia and China specifically with
a lot of dairy consumption. That's kind of interesting. Uh.
And it could be that it was so rare that
that was part of why it became a yummy, palatial
like special treat, that there was some level of um
um exclusivity to it that made it appealing. For all
(11:13):
we know, it totally upset their stomach, a special treat
that made you feel ill afered. But once all of
these ingredients were combined, they would pack the mixture into
these metal tubes and then submerge them in an ice
pool for freezing, which is kind of cool to think about.
I wonder if anybody does that style of ice cream
(11:34):
making today. I would try it for sure, even if
it does taste like muffles. I don't know. If I
would try camp for ice cream. I would try it.
I'm adventurous. I'll try almost anything. Yeah, somehow I would
be more inclined to eat bugs than camp for ice cream.
But then there is a lot of things that happened
(11:54):
having to do with, um, the area of Turkey and
Arab cultures, and how that kind of slowly gets ice
cream and frozen treats into Europe, Europe and the European countries,
and then it kind of takes a lot of big
steps towards being the dessert that we know today. Arab
people's are said to have drunken iced slushy like sherbet
(12:17):
style drink, and medieval times, uh, this was normally fruit flavored,
and apparently it spread to several European cultures because it
was so refreshing and tasty. Yeah, the travelers that would
travel around the Mediterranean and do trades with other countries
kind of picked up this habit of drinking it brought
it right back home with them. And one of the
supporting elements for the belief that ice cream true, you know,
(12:40):
true ice cream I'm making the air quotes originated in Italy,
comes from their knowledge of chilling various beverages in the
mid to late fifteen hundreds, using a slurry of saltpeter
and snow to like submerge things and quickly almost flash
freeze them. And we know this was used for wine
to cool it down, but it's believed that this process
(13:03):
may have also been applied to chilling these slushy sherbets
that they had discovered and picked up as a habit
when they were traveling uh And they were sometimes called
Turkish sorbets. And the word sorbet is one that in
different European cultures. As this history goes on, it really
gets traded around in ways that are not consistent. Different
things were being called sorbet that we would define differently
(13:25):
I think today. So that's a tricky one. If you're
reading any of the the passages or sources we list
in the show notes, just know that sorbet is a
word that gets kind of tossed around without consistency. Yeah. Well,
and if you've if you've ever seen, you know, an
old fashioned ice cream maker do its thing, you can
sort of see a seed of that process and this
(13:47):
whole idea of using a slurry of saltpeter and snow
to cool stuff down. Yeah, so they were onto it
early sorbet as we know, it was invented when these
icy drinks, uh were made into hard frozen to eats
that incorporated sugar. The man who gets the credit for
this is Antonio Latini, who was working as a steward
to the Chief Minister of the Spanish Viceroy in Naples
(14:10):
in the late sixteen hundreds. He further experimented and added
dairy to the mix. In Latini's book Scalco ala Moderna,
which means carver to the modern, He included recipes for
lemon strawberry, sour cherry, chocolate and cinnamon ice, and a
milk ice that's often cited as the first two ice
cream recipe. I would eat any of those. They sound
(14:32):
very interesting. Um, cinnamon I sounded really interesting to me,
mostly because my husband really loved cinnamon. And in six
six a cafe in Paris opened UH. Sometimes it's called
Il Procope, sometimes La Procope, sometimes Cafe Procope, but it's
proprietor was actually Sicilian. It was a man named Francesco
Procopio de Cortelli UH, and it offered a variety of
(14:55):
ice treats, and some historians credit him with bringing gelato
to France, but others say his cafe only offered very
cold beverages, so there's some discrepancy about what was really
on the menu and whether he was importing ice cream
to France. Um. But what's really interesting is that that
cafe is still open today, so you can go visit it.
(15:17):
It really has the established six six sign above it,
and you can go. Let's go now, all right, get
in the car. The French had already been experimenting with
ice cream like treats, specifically a concoction called fromage, which
is very similar to ice cream. This was not made
with cheese, even though it has the same word as cheese.
(15:39):
It's not completely clear why the two words share the
same name, but it's possible that the frozen dairy dessert
was chilled in cheese molds. As fromage developed and started
to be referred to as nij which is the French
word for snow, and then gloss, which is what it's
now called today. It became incredibly popular throughout the country,
(16:00):
and in six which was the same year Latini's cookbook
for Isis came out, a French cookbook for similar desserts
entitled La Maison regulas which is a well ordered home,
was written by Nicholas Audeger, and it was touted as
being quote the true method for making all sorts of
water essences and liqueurs strong and refreshing in the Italian style.
(16:24):
Odege's book was much clearer in its recipes and instructions,
and it's spelled out exactly how to make cram glass
a which is frizzing cream. The use of a bucket
inside of another bucket with the gap between the two
filled with ice and salt is described, as well as
the method for stirring the mixture in the interior bucket
as it freezes until it has the consistency of snow,
(16:47):
which is really how I scream sti't get made, yep,
unless you're making it in a funky science experiment, which
is also fun or if you're in a factory. But
when people have their home machines. That's it's really the
same deal going on. Um and auDA Jay's book you
can actually read online if you are fluent in French.
We will have that link in the show notes. Uh,
(17:08):
my French is not good enough to follow a recipe
of that nature. It's kind of mediocre. Uh. But then
sort of an interesting thing happened, and this is sort
of the point where it becomes a very American treat.
So while ice cream existed in Europe for many years prior,
and the recipes and the love of the treat traveled
across the Atlantic with the colonists in the seventeen forties,
(17:30):
there is also this kind of wacky mythological tale that
attributes the invention of ice cream to Martha Washington. Uh.
The story claims that she left a bowl of sweet
cream outdoors overnight and accidentally stumbled upon the creation when
she discovered the forgotten dish, which had frozen the next morning.
And of course this is completely untrue. We have instances
(17:53):
of ice cream going on way before that. And there's
actually the first account of ice cream in America is
in a her from seventeen forty four, which was written
by a guest of William Bladen, who was the governor
of Maryland, UM. And this guest was writing of the
time that he visited with the politician and what was
served while he was there, and ice cream was one
(18:14):
of the things too. So even though Martha Washington did
not invent ice cream, George Washington did love it. Like
that's an understatement. I think he really super loved it.
In the seventeen eighty four Ledger for Mount Vernon, there's
a record of an ice cream machine being acquired for
the sum of one pound, thirteen shillings and threepence. And
(18:34):
even with his own ice cream turns at home. In
seventeen ninety, George Washington is said to have spent two
hundred dollars over the course of one summer on ice
cream at a local shop, which is apparently close to
a hundred thousand dollars of today's money. May have contributed
to the wooden teeth mythology. Well, And it's funny when
(18:54):
I was talking to my husband about this, because I
was blathering on about how interesting I found it, he
or if it wasn't, because he had the wooden teeth,
ice cream was a yummy thing. He could easily eat
because it would melt in his mouth. I think everyone
had I mean, definitely everyone had terrible teeth at the time,
but George Washington's terrible teeth are are infamous. Shortly after
(19:23):
Washington's death, an inventory of Mount Vernon was made and
numerous ice ice cream supplies turn up. In that inventory.
There were two Pewter ice cream pots as well as
numerous special ice cream serving dishes. Ice Cream was a
favorite treat for both the company, who would you know,
arrive and stay there and for the family in residence. Yeah,
(19:44):
when they had state dinners, you were pretty much going
to get ice cream as dessert. Uh. It was really like,
I can't stress enough how much George Washington loved it.
But he was not the only person. Thomas Jefferson had
his own recipe for vanilla that he had handwritten now
and he served it with Savoy cookies. And you can
actually see that handwritten recipe online. It's part of the
(20:05):
American Treasures of the Library Congress, and we'll link to
that in our show notes. And he is Jefferson is
said to have maintained multiple ice houses so that he
could constantly be storing ice for making more ice cream.
As well as storing his ice cream once it had
been made. That he was just stockpiling ice cream supplies
and ice cream. I'm also in favor of a giant
(20:27):
ice cream stockpile. The Lincoln's were also big fans Mary Todd.
Lincoln would frequently host strawberry parties, which will get togethers
centered around dessert service and co starring with the ice
with the strawberries was ice cream. Yeah. So, uh, ice
cream has a very favored history with American presidents and
even more modern presidents have definitely sung the praises of
(20:49):
ice cream and we all love it. It's good, I'm
telling you. Uh. And perhaps because of the popularity with
the early political leaders, ice cream was enthusiastically embraced in
the US, But up until the early eighteen hundreds it
was kind of a fancy pants dessert for wealthy people
and high society types. Yeah. If average people cannot afford
(21:12):
to keep things cold and uh and to get all
the ice and the sugar and everything else that are
needed to make it, then it does make it a
very exclusive food. Yeah. So then when you think of
people maintaining multiple ice houses to keep their stockpile, that's
not something most people would have had access to, but
the insulated ice house was invented around the turn of
(21:34):
the century, so that meant that more people could have
ice cream on hand, whereas prior to that, only wealthy
people could really maintain an ice house because they would
have to have a constant ice coming in and constant
management of the situation in the temperature. Yeah, it really
It reminds me of the possibly apocryphal story about why
sweet tea is so popular in the South. It had
(21:54):
to do with if you could afford the sugar and
the ice needed to make sweet tea. You're doing all right, Yeah,
it's a little bit of a calling card of your aristocracy.
Would you like to come over and have sweet tea?
On my part the money for that On the Verandah
in the early eighteen forties, New Jersey housewife Nancy Johnson
(22:16):
made ice cream in the normal way, in a metal
bucket packed with ice and salt. It was great, but
this was really, as we've talked about, a time consuming
and it's hard to keep things consistent when you're having
to stir them constantly. So she invented the hand cranked
ice cream churn and her new artificial freezer was patented
on September and the basic design continues to be popular
(22:40):
now with pretty minimal changes. Yeah, ice cream churns that
you by now are so similar to that original one.
Obviously the components are made of more modern materials, but yeah,
the same. But you can also still buy hand crank
can there. You take a little more work, you earn
that ice cream, which is probably good, but um, yeah,
(23:01):
it's it's retained its function and it's continued to be
about that same thing that the Italians were doing with
ice and salt mixed together surrounding this thing surrounding the
dairy bucket so they could kind of quickly freeze it.
So little change, don't mess with perfection. The first commercial
(23:22):
ice cream factory was opened in eighteen fifty by Jacob Fustle,
and he was a dairyman from Baltimore and he wanted
to make use of the surplus cream that his dairy
was producing, which you know, once they had cleared that off,
they had to use it very quickly, so it went
into making ice cream, and so ice cream at that point,
you know transition. It became not just a home main
(23:43):
treat that you would be using your hand crank for
but an actual industry, which, as we know, has flourished. Yes,
eighteen seventy four saw the first ice cream soda shop
in the United States as well as the origin of
the soda jerk. So the late Victorian and Edwardian era
saw a real explosion in ice cream popularity. By the
(24:03):
nineteen teens, all of America was covered in ice cream shops.
And another thing that may have contributed to ice cream
sort of being so associated with the US is that
during World War Two, ice cream was like a huge
part of the morale efforts of the U. S. Armed Forces,
Like it was literally listed as a line item in
their morale budget, like that they had to have rations
(24:25):
of ice cream for the soldiers. The military served ice
cream to the troops, and they even established this blows
my mind in the most wonderful way, a floating ice
cream parlor in the Western Pacific that would serve the soldiers.
So it was like a floating treat factory. It was
on a barge and it had to be towed by
other ships. It wasn't self powered, but its only job
(24:48):
was to produce ice cream for soldiers. Uh, which is
really fascinating and interesting. Uh. And it was quite expensive apparently,
and when the war concluded, ice cream was a huge
part of the festive tis. From the end of the
war through the seventies, prepackaged ice cream started to grow
as something that you could buy at the supermarket. And
(25:10):
it's the planted most of the quaint ice cream shops
that had become popular in the early dreds. Yeah, and
of course that sort of started this big shift that
we've witnessed in the last couple of decades where some
people would say the quality goes down when you're getting
um ice cream at the supermarket. But then there has
also been this sort of growth of the boutique industry
(25:30):
of these smaller ice cream shops again that are kind
of more specialized, their artisan ice creams. Now. I've visited
two of such shops over Fourth of July weekend when
it was extremely hot in Boston. Yeah. A good fresh
ice cream, like a homemade ice cream, is good stuff. Uh. Yeah,
(25:51):
And we have these specialty shops all over the US
now and in other countries as well. But of course
we owe all of these yummy treats were enjoying with
all of our mix ins to China. Or Nero or
Marco Polo or King Solomon, depending on whose version of
the story you believe in which definition you would heere
to in terms of historical context. Ice cream, I love it.
(26:16):
I was just immensely relieved the time this particularly, like
I can understand how it became a popular thing to
serve ice cream during the harvest, or to people who
were traveling in hot weather. Um, just because of having
walked to a place in the ninety degree heat and
then walked back while drinking a frozen drink, and man,
(26:40):
was a different experience. The trip back was so much
better than the trip out, and the whole all I
had been able to think was it's so hot. It's
so hot. And then on the way back, I was like,
I'm drinking delicious. This was this was a like a
sorbet that was yeah, a frozen tree. It's shocking how
active they are and just kind of cooling you down
(27:02):
and making you feel good on a day that is sweltering.
We um. Anybody that runs knows probably about the Peachtree
road Race, which is a huge race here in Atlanta
on the fourth of July. It's like up to sixty
runners now, so it's quite mammoth. Uh. And after you finish,
you kind of have to go through this cattle shoot
set up where they march everybody up this one street
(27:23):
to get back to public transportation. And smartly, a few
years ago, we have a local um ice cream popsicle.
It's not all ice cream, but a popsicle vendor called
King of Pops, and they had the very smart business
idea to start setting up rolling carts along that route
because you can't go off of that route, like they
kind of keep you cordoned in and police block off
(27:44):
other streets so you can't kind of verge out and
have a mass. So it's just like all these people
marching by, and it's so hard to resist. You just
pull out your money or your credit card and you're like, yes,
please give me the pops and it makes it so
much better than if you were just walking without them. Yeah,
we were walking to Fenway Park on the fourth where
people ate lots of ice cream to keep cool. Um,
(28:06):
and I was thinking about the Peach Gree Road race
and how it must have been miserable. Yeah, I did
not run it this year. I usually do, but I
opted not to this year. Um partially because I thought
about that horrible march back to public transportation, and I
dislike it so much that I was like, that's let
somebody else have the entry. There's like a whole lottery
(28:26):
system to even get into the race anymore because it's
gotten so big. Uh. And apparently there was so much
rain this year that the park that you kind of
have to travel through to get done, get your stuff,
and then leave was covered in mud. So I was
glad I missed it, but kudos to everybody that ran
it because it was sweltery and muggy. I ran just
(28:48):
not there. But I did not have ice cream afterwards,
so that's my punishment like now, and I did not
have ice cream at Fenway Park, just because when the
ice cream was coming by, it was late enough in
the game game that we were starting to think about
when you're gonna leave, Yes, at which point I did
get a frozen coffee drink Yo also delicious. Thank you
(29:14):
so much for joining us for this Saturday Classic. Since
this is out of the archive, if you heard an
email address or a Facebook U r L or something
similar during the course of the show, that may be
obsolete now. So here is our current contact information. We
are at History podcast at how stuff works dot com,
and then we're at Missed in the History. All over
(29:34):
social media that is our name on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Pinterest,
and Instagram. Thanks again for listening. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.