Olga Dakan, age 8. of Bowling Green, Ohio, for her question:
WHO INVENTED ICE CREAM?
We don't know exactly who invented ice cream, but we do know that when the Italian trader Marco Polo returned to Europe from China in 1295, he brought recipes for water ices that were very much like ice cream.
By the 1600s, Europeans had started to add cream, fruit and spices to crushed ice or snow. Ice cream was really on the way then.
English colonists brought recipes for ice cream to America as early as the 1700s. It became a very popular luxury food and up until 1850, it was only made in private homes.
A Baltimore milk dealer named Jacob Fussell must be given the credit for starting the ice cream industry. In 1851 he established the first ice cream plant in North America.
Almost immediately, ice cream became a national favorite. By the early 1900s, soda fountains were opened across the country and such favorites as sodas and sundaes were introduced.
The world's first ice cream cone was served at the 1904 World's Fair in Saint Louis. And then in 1921, the popular ice cream bar was first introduced.
By the end of the 1940s, following World War II, the real ice cream boom started. how many people have ice cream every day instead of only on special occasions, as they did not too many years ago.
By about 1970, over 775 million gallons of ice cream were produced each year in the United States. Now that figure is well over 1 billion gallons of ice cream and related frozen desserts every year. Included are ice milk, sherbet and water ice.
The production of ice cream and other frozen desserts today uses almost 10 percent of the nation's milk supply. It takes about seven quarts of milk to produce four quarts of ice cream. Each American now eats an average of about 23 quarts of ice cream annually.
Ice cream is rich in calcium, phosphorus, protein and vitamin A because of the milk used to produce it. Ice cream is also high in calories because of the carbohydrates and fats it contains, and so it is a good source of energy.
In addition to milk products, much ice cream also includes sugar.
Standards have been established for the content of ice cream and related frozen desserts by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. For example, milk solids and milk fat must make up at least 20 percent of the weight of ice cream.
Ice milk must consist of a minimum of 11 percent milk solids while frozen custard, also called French ice cream and French custard ice cream, has the same ingredients as ice cream, plus 1.4 percent egg yolk solids.
Sherbet contains about twice as much sugar as does ice cream, plus a minimum of two percent milk solids. Water ice resembles sherbet but has no milk solids.
In about one fourth of the states you can also buy a frozen dessert called mellorine. It contains 20 percent milk solids but includes coconut, cottonseed or soybean oils instead of milk fat.