The top ice cream ice breakers
Despite running the world’s largest economy and having his finger on the nuclear button in 1984, President Ronald Reagan found time to designate July as National Ice Cream Month and the third Sunday of the month as National Ice Cream Day. He recognised ice cream as a fun and nutritious food that is enjoyed by a full 90% of the nation's population. In the proclamation, President Reagan called for all people of the United States to observe these events with "appropriate ceremonies and activities."
Well, in tribute to his contribution to world peace, cowboy movies and ice cream, we are proud to bring you ten enormously useless facts about ice cream.
1. The first ice cream was created for Emperor Nero of Rome. It involved getting slaves to carry snow down the mountain and then putting snow, honey, berries and such like on top – so it was more like a Snowlero than a Solero (sorry). Nowadays, the slaves would need to stop en route to make sure that the QA team could have a quick look at it.
2. The first commercial ice cream plant was established in Baltimore in 1851 by Jacob Fussell. One of our interims is thought to have started their career there.
3. The Glasgow Ice Cream Wars were deeply unpleasant conflicts in the East End of Glasgow in the 1980s between rival ice cream van operators.
4. King Charles II was served ice cream at Windsor Castle in 1671.
5. Amongst other things, Margaret Thatcher was partly responsible for ice cream in its hideous ‘Mr Whippy’ format. The Iron Lady worked as a development scientist at Lyons (I bet those factory trials got through without a hitch).
6. One of the strangest flavours of ice cream was developed by fabulous chef Heston Blumenthal, who created ‘Bacon and Egg’ flavour in his 3 star Michelin restaurant, The Fat Duck, where he was also responsible for Snail Porridge. Erm, yum yum.
7. Britain is Europe’s third biggest consumer of ice cream at around 8 litres per person per year. Incredibly, given their average temperature, taking first and second places are Denmark and Sweden. This statistic (from Marshfield Ice Cream’s website) caused controversy in our office as we worked out that this equated to about 17 pints per person per year. With the exception of me, no-one ate nearly this much. In the US the consumption is around 21 litres per year, which goes some way as to explain why a lot of them are massive.
8. The most popular topping for ice cream is chocolate syrup.
9. The 99 ice cream was launched in the 1930s. At this time much of the British ice cream industry was run by Italians and it was they who chose the name for the ‘99’. There was a legend that an Italian king had the very finest group of soldiers for his bodyguards - 99 of them in fact. This is why the number 99 represents quality.
10. Finally, a lovely moral tale…
Ben & Jerry - the spur to their amazing transformation into a multinational company came when the nationally distributed Häagen-Dazs brand, the ersatz creation of the mammoth Pillsbury company, applied pressure to distributors to freeze out the tiny firm.
Ben & Jerry replied by targeting Pillsbury’s cherished logo, the Pillsbury Doughboy, with a publicity campaign with an air of artless grassroots improvisation: “What’s the Doughboy afraid of?” The campaign won allegiance for the underdog all over America and, after their legal victory, swept Ben & Jerry to national prominence. They, erm, then sold up to Unilever, but let’s forget that bit.
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