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Ice cream: A timeline
CBC News Online | May 12, 2004

Note: much of the early history of ice cream is either folklore, legend or tall tales and cannot be independently verified. That said, here goes:

Late 13th century

Italian explorer Marco Polo sees ice creams being made during his trip to China. On his return, he introduces them to Italy.

1533
Italian chefs of the young Catherine de'Medici take the delectable dessert to France when she goes there to marry the Duc d'Orleans.

Sometime before 1649
Charles I of England promises his chef a lifetime pension for not revealing the recipe of the captivating frozen dessert he serves at a grand banquet. Charles falls out of favour and is beheaded in 1649. The recipe begins to spread sometime before that.

1774
Philip Lenzi, a caterer, announces in a New York newspaper upon his arrival from London, that he will be offering for sale various confections, including ice cream.

1813
Dolley Madison, wife of U.S. President James Madison, serves ice cream at her husband's Inaugural Ball in 1813.

1846
Nancy Johnson of New Jersey invents the first hand-cranked freezer. By turning a freezer handle, the operator agitates a container of ice cream mix in a bed of salt and ice until the mix freezes.

1850
Thomas Webb, a Toronto confectioner, sells ice cream for the first time in Canada.

1851
North American commercial production of ice cream begins in Baltimore, Md., under the watchful eye of Jacob Fussell.

1893
William Nielson begins production of ice cream at a plant on Gladstone Avenue in Toronto. His company cranks out ice cream at the same location for almost 100 years.

1904
St. Louis. The World's Fair. Demand for ice cream is so overwhelming for one ice cream vendor that he runs out of serving dishes. He teams up with a waffle vendor, who rolls his product into "cornucopias." That's later shortened to the more manageable ice cream cone.

1926
The first continuous process freezer is perfected. The ice cream industry goes into overdrive as the age of mass production takes off.

The late 1920s
Reuben Mattus works in his mother's ice cream business selling fruit ice and ice cream pops from a horse-drawn wagon in the bustling streets of the Bronx, N.Y. He develops a passion for quality ice cream. The family business grows and prospers over the next few decades. In 1961, Mattus forms a new company and calls his ice cream Haagen-Dazs. At first, he offers only three flavours: vanilla, chocolate and coffee.

1963
Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield meet in seventh-grade gym class in Merrick, N.Y. (Long Island). Fourteen years later they move to Vermont, take a correspondence course in making ice cream. In 1978, they open their first Ben & Jerry's Homemade ice cream shop.



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Source: Health Canada

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External links: Canada's Food Guide to Healthy Living (1992 version)

U.S. Department of Agriculture food guide pyramid

Canada's Food Guide for Healthy Living website

Foodshare

McDonald's Canada nutrition calculator

Center for Science and the Public Interest: Health Nutrition and Diet

Scientific American: Rebuilding the Food Pyramid

Health Canada tipsheet on Nutrition Facts table

Health Canada tipsheet on diet-related health claims

Canadian Food Inspection Agency 2003 Guide to Food Labelling and Advertising

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