The History of Ice Cream in New Zealand

By Chris Newey

Ice Cream Technology

Ice cream probably evolved from chilled wines and other beverages, what we might nowadays call "slushies". Around 3,000 years go, the Emperors of China are believed to have enjoyed frozen delicacies made from snow and ice flavoured with fruit, wine and honey.

In the 4th Century B.C., Alexander the Great is said to have been fond of iced beverages, and by 62 A.D., the Roman Emperor Nero is recorded to have sent fleets of slaves to the Apennine mountains to collect snow and ice to be flavoured with nectar, fruit pulp and honey.

The technology for storing ice originated in the Middle East and was developed in ancient Mesopotamia as far back as 2000 BC. Large ice-houses built with thick walls, wholly or partially underground, provided insulation to slow the melting of ice and snow brought down from the mountains. The Persian Yakhchal (ice pit) utilised evaporative cooling, in effect a giant refrigerator.

Legend has it that the great adventurer Marco Polo brought back recipes for water ices from China to Venice in the 13th Century, however since the Persian Empire was already enjoying frozen fruit juice, teas, wines and liqueurs by then, it seems more likely that these products spread to Italy via Persia.

The Arabic word charab is thought to be the source of the Italian word sorbetto, the French sorbet and English sherbet.

Using ice as the sole freezing medium for frozen confectionery has limitations - the zero degree C / 32 degree F temperature is only cold enough to produce slush freezing, and the more sugar and/or cream in the liquid preparation, the harder it is to freeze.

Some time before the 16th century it was discovered that by adding salt, or saltpeter to the ice, colder temperatures could be achieved. The salt creates an endothermic reaction that lowers the freezing temperature of the salt-water mixture to about minus 5 C / 23 degrees F , making it much more efficient as a freezing and storage medium. This allowed the freezing of sweeter and thicker mixes into harder frozen confections.

Ice cream is said to have been introduced to Europe by Italian duchess Catherine de Medici of Florence (above) who took her Italian cooks and sorbetto recipes with her to France in 1533 when she married the Duke of Orléans, who later became King Henry II.

Charles I of England is then said to have purchased the formula for "frozen milk" from a French chef in the 17th Century. As they spread through the royal houses of Europe, eggs and cream also began to be added, and the frozen delicacies came to be known as "cream ices".

However they arrived, we do know that water ices (sorbets) appeared in the 1660s in Naples, Florence, Paris and Spain.

In 1660 a Sicilian, Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli, started to sell cream ices to Paris society from his Cafe Procope, which still operates today.

Procope had inherited a machine invented by his grandfather for making sorbetti, but he took this further, developing recipes that blended milk, cream, butter and eggs, producing a rich, creamy product to which he added pistachio, almonds, lemons, oranges, chocolate and coffee.

Decorated frozen desserts became fashionable - the bombe glacee, parfait, coupe, and mousse - and the cafe became a gathering place for philosophers and intellectuals.

“The establishment of new philosophy, our cradle was a café”,
circa 1779.
- © Bibliothèque Nationale de France, via Manifest.

By now ice was being commercially harvested from frozen lakes and traded in bulk around Europe. Prior to this, the difficulty of collecting and storing ice had meant that ice cream was an expensive luxury. Ice was stored in pits, wells or specially designed ice-houses.

In 1760 "The Compleat Confectioner" cookbook contained a method for making raspberry ice cream.

Les glaces from Le Bon Genre. Hand-coloured etching, 1801.
- The British Museum.

The U.S. President's wife Dolly Madison created a sensation when she served a magnificent strawberry ice cream creation as a dessert in the White House at Madison's second inaugural banquet at the White House in 1813.

In 1843 an American woman, Nancy M. Johnston, invented and patented the "Artificial Freezer", a hand-cranked ice cream freezer, similar in concept to a butter churn, but with ice and salt packed around the outside.

Patented Johnson Artificial Freezer.
- U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

By now, lake-harvested ice was being traded all around the world. The ice from Wenham Lake, Massachusetts in particular became world-famous for its clarity, harvested and distributed by the Wenham Lake Ice Company, founded by Frederic Tudor, who became known as "The Ice King".

Wenham Lake ice harvesting, 1845
- Wikipedia.

Ice was packed in the holds of ships in large blocks, stacked together tightly, with wood shavings, sawdust, or rice chaff packed around the outside for insulation. By packing the blocks tightly, they behave as a single large block of ice, significant melting occuring only on the outside surfaces, and losses are kept to a minimum.

Special insulated ice houses were built to store the ice on arrival, until it could be distributed. Ice boxes ("American refrigerators") began to appear in the homes of the wealthy - wooden boxes lined with tin or zinc and insulated with various materials including cork, sawdust, and seaweed. A drip pan collected the melt water and had to be emptied daily.

Legend: The Hokey Pokey Man

Hokey-pokey originally referred to the cheap and not very hygienic ice cream and ice milk sold by street ice cream vendors in the 1800's and early 1900's. Ice cream was frozen in a block, sometimes layered with three different flavours (the origin of today's Neapolitan), cut into slices and sold wrapped in paper. Swiss-Italian immigrants introduced the idea to Britain, and by 1850 Carlo Gatti was peddling ice cream to Londoners from a painted cart. In both the UK and America the ice cream-selling street vendor came to be known as the Hokey-Pokey Man. It's possible that the term Hokey-Pokey came from the Italian, "Gelati, ecco un poco!" ("Ice cream, here's a little!" or "try a little!"). Some vendors sold "penny-licks" - servings of ice cream in a small stemmed glass or dish (“lick”), to be eaten, "licked" and returned for reuse. This terribly un-hygienic practice, along with the fact that ingredients such as egg and milk were often not pasteurised, and food handling standards were non-existent, led to several outbreaks of public food poisoning and the association of the term "hokey pokey" with ice cream of dubious quality.

Brighton seafront around 1910. The female ice cream vendor is holding a child and offering "Pure Ices" and "Hokey Pokey" ice cream to the holidaymakers promenading on the lower esplanade. - Sussex PhotoHistory

In 1851, the first ice cream "factory" (mass production using manually operated churns) was set up by Jacob Fussell (above) in Baltimore, USA. By operating at scale, he was able to offer ice cream at a much lower price. Fussell shipped his ice cream in trains packed with ice from Baltimore to Washington, Boston and New York, earning the title in America of the “father of the wholesale ice cream industry.”

The first commercial ice-making machine was patented in Australia in 1855 by James Harrison (above). The mechanical refrigeration process was based on the principal of vapour compression and used ether as the refrigerant.

The eventual industrial scale machine had a 15ft flywheel and produced over 6000 lbs. of ice per day.

James Harrison's ice-making machine, as built by Siebe Brothers, London.
- State Library of Victoria.

By the 1870s, mechanical or "factory" ice was available widely and cheaply. Despite this, the international trade in lake-harvested ice continued well into the 1900's.

Further mechanisation of the ice cream manufacturing process took place in the 1880s and 1890s as steam and then electrical power was harnessed.

French engineer August Gaulin invented the homogeniser in 1899. A high pressure, three-piston pump forced cream or ice cream mix through tiny capillary tubes, micro-fining the fat globules and creating a stable emulsion, which in ice cream produced a much smoother ice cream texture.

At the St. Louis (USA) World Fair in 1904, a Syrian waffle vendor named Ernest A. Hamwi (above) is credited with introducing the ice cream cone, when he started rolling waffles into cone shapes for the benefit of an ice cream vendor in an adjoining booth.

The first circulating brine-chilled mechanical horizontal batch ice cream freezer, the Miller Globe Horizontal Brine Freezer, was introduced by Harry H. Miller of Canton, Ohio, USA, in 1904.

'Brine' referred to a fully dissolved salt-water mixture. Circulation of the brine in a jacket around the freezer increased the rate of freezing through faster heat transfer, greatly improving production rates and control of the ice cream making process.

In 1905 Emery Thompson introduced the gravity-fed vertical batch ice cream freezer. It also used circulating brine as the refrigerant.

Emery Thompson gravity-fed vertical batch ice cream freezer patent.
- Emery Thompson Machine & Supply Co..

The "Popsicle" is said to have been accidentally invented in 1905 by eleven-year-old Frank Epperson, when fruit-flavoured soda water was left outside and froze on a particularly cold San Francisco night, with stirring sticks still in place.

The first electric home refrigerator was introduced by General Electric in 1911.

The first direct-expansion ice cream freezer was invented in 1913 but commercialisation was slow and brine freezers would remain in use for several years.

By the 1920s, a standard commercial ice cream manufacturing process had been more or less established.

Milk and cream were poured cold from cans into a large receiving tank, from which a measured amount was pumped into a large stirred, glass-lined, steam-jacketed mixing tank. Milk powder, sugar and any other dry ingredients were carefully mixed in to avoid lumps and fully dissolve. The liquid 'mix' was heated to 69 C (155 F) and held at this temperature for half an hour to achieve pasteurisation. It was then cooled down to 43 C (110 F) and pumped through a strainer.

Next the warm mix was pumped through a homogeniser or 'viscoliser', which forced it through a small orifice at very high pressure to break down the globules of milk fat, giving a more stable emulsion and smoother ice cream texture.

Manton-Gaulin two-stage homogeniser
- Frostee Digest

The mix was then passed through or over a cooler, and pumped into an aging vat at 4 C (39 F) and usually held overnight. 'Aging' the mix improves the whipping properties - allowing proper cooling before freezing, allowing the milk fat to partially crystallize and giving the stabilisers time to fully hydrate.

The mix was now ready to churn - pumped or poured into batch freezers for freezing and whipping to a stiff, smooth consistency with the right amount of air incorporated - measured as 'overrun'.

Perfection Ice Cream Co. batch ice cream freezers, Christchurch, 1932
- Frostee Digest

Once ready, the ice cream was drawn off through a spout, packed into cylindrical one-gallon, 2 and 1/2, or 5 gallon metal cans, and immediately placed in a blast-freezer - the faster it could be frozen, the smaller the ice crystals that were formed and the smoother and more stable the product. Once 'hardened', the cans were moved to storage freezers ready for distribution.

The mass production and refrigerated distribution of ice cream over large distances created quality challenges. Once frozen, even small changes in temperature will cause the tiny ice crystals in freshly-churned ice cream to grow larger, eventually leading to an icey and unacceptable texture.

By the 1920s, egg yolk and gelatin were typically added to commercial ice cream mixes. Egg yolk for its ability to emulsify milk fat, giving a smoother, finer texture, and gelatin (a natural protein, used at 0.5% or less) for its ability to stabilise the fat emulsion and bind the un-frozen portion of water, slowing the growth of ice crystals during storage. Emulsifiers and stabilisers played an important part in allowing the frozen storage and transportation of ice cream products while maintaining an acceptably smooth texture.

In 1923 the first commercially successful plate-and-frame heat exchanger was introduced by Dr Richard Seligman of the Aluminum Plant and Vessel Company Ltd., later APV. Initially intended for milk pasteurisation, the technology would eventually be adopted by the ice cream industry.

In 1925 Manton-Gaulin patented a 2-stage homogenizing valve.

Ice cream novelties as we now know them began to appear in the 1920s - the first chocolate-coated ice cream bar, the "I-Scream Bar", appeared in the USA in 1919 (later re-named the "Eskimo Pie"), and the first ice cream on a stick was the "Good Humor Bar" (1920, USA). Both products are still on the market, as is the Popsicle!

Anderson Bros. Mfg. Co. designed and built the first automatic Eskimo Pie packaging machine in 1924. “The special Anderson Eskimo Pie Machine, which cuts, dips and wraps eighty dozen per hour, makes this delicacy a most hygienic product as it is not touched by hand during the process of manufacture.”

Eskimo Pie production at the Frozen Products Ltd, Tennyson St factory in Wellington, ca. 1930. Anderson Eskimo Pie Machine at right. Photographer KE Niven.
- Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, C.003076.

In 1925 dry ice was invented. This provided a cheap and convenient way for snack vendors to sell ice cream treats in picture theatres and at sporting events.

In 1926 a continuous scraped-surface freezer was developed by Clarence Vogt of Louisville, Kentucky (above). Vogt applied for 15 patents for his "Votator", which revolutionised ice cream production.

Previously all production had been by batch, requiring regular re-filling of the churn and freezing and whipping of the mix before pumping out to a filler. Now the mix could be continuously pumped into one end of the churn and ice cream continuously pumped out the other. Throughput and daily production were increased and per unit costs reduced.

Clarence Vogt's patent for the Vogt Instant Freezer, 2 December 1930.
- Tico Vogt.

Not only that but the rapid freezing produced a much smaller initial ice crystal size, meaning a smoother, creamier, more consistent texture and better protection against freezer shock (ice crystal growth due to temperature fluctuations during storage).

The Cherry-Burrell Corporation bought the rights to his design, and began marketing the Vogt Freezer, opening the way for true mass production of ice cream.

In later models ammonia, which reaches a lower temperature but is harder to handle, replaced the brine.

- Frostee Digest.

In 1927 the first commercial electric refrigerator cabinets became available in New Zealand allowing retailers to store and serve ice cream without having to pack ice boxes with ice and salt.

In 1935 Gram refrigeration company of Denmark made the world's first automatic Ice Bar Freezer, enabling mass production of frozen bars and stick novelties.

In 1937 Peters Ice Cream Co. (N.Z.) Ltd in Auckland commissioned the country's first two automatic refrigerated ice cream transport trucks, built by D. McL. Wallace Ltd.

Peters Ice Cream built NZ's first mechanically refrigerated truck, 1937.
- The Frostee Digest, NZICA archives.

In the 1950s natural vegetable gums (carob gum, guar gum, carageenan) took over from gelatin as the ice cream stabilisers of choice. They were more effective at slowing ice crystal growth during storage and handling and could be used at much lower concentrations. By the end of the decade, modern emulsifiers such as glyceryl monostearate were also replacing the functionality of egg yolks.

The widespread adoption of High Temperature Short Time (HTST) heat exchangers by the 1950s revolutionised ice cream mix pasteurisation technology.

Previously mix had been pasteurised batch-fashion by heating in large jacketed glass-lined tanks to at least 69 C (155 F) and holding for 30 minutes, before cooling down again. This gave the ice cream a slightly 'cooked' or custard flavour.

HTST systems allowed continuous pasteurisation with heating to 80 C (175 F) for only 25 seconds, meaning much higher throughputs and cleaner flavour.

The combination of technical advances around this time made significant changes to the taste and texture of ice cream. This would later lead to a nostalgia for "old-fashioned" egg custard-style ice cream with it's warm, cooked flavours - a style that came to be known as French Vanilla.

The Neapolitan Three-Tube Vogt Ice Cream Freezer was introduced at the U.S. Dairy Exposition in 1956. It was the first freezer capable of producing three flavours simultaneously from one (three-barrelled) machine.

Many further refinements to manufacturing equipment have taken place since then, but by this stage the basic technology was in place to produce the ice cream that we know and love today.