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… ice cream and sorbet

23 July 2020
This delicacy has not always been so accessible. In ancient times, it was reserved only for the most powerful people in the world, ready to do anything to get cooler...

The first tastings of iced fruit are said to date back more than two thousand years. Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) loved fruit salads coated with honey and cooled in the snow. As for the Roman Emperor Nero, who ruled from 54 to 68, he enjoyed tasting mixtures of fruit crushed in honey and ice cream... The height of luxury! The ice was transported by ox-cart convoys from the Alps and the Apennines. As soon as they arrived, the blocks were buried in wells for conservation. Also, more than twenty centuries ago, the Chinese initiated the principle of the ice cream maker, by pouring a mixture of snow and saltpetre (or potassium nitrate, which preserves the ice) on the outside walls of containers filled with fruit juice. In the 9th century, the caliphs of Baghdad enjoyed sherbets, fruit or flower syrups served very fresh from snow collected from Mount Lebanon and brought back on camels. 

Ice cream prepared with milk is said to have made the journey from the East to Venice thanks to Marco Polo (1254-1324), and then introduced to mainland France (along with the recipe for macaroons) by Catherine de Medici's confectioners when she married Henry II, the King of France, in 1533. Parisians began to taste it at Le Procope, a café opened in 1668 by the (decidedly) Sicilian Francesco Procopio. The address soon became famous thanks to the presence of celebrities from the political and literary worlds. 

Iced strawberry tart by Alain Chartier

The first written recipes date back to the 18th century, with trendy desserts such as bombes, entremets or parfaits. Ambassador to France from 1785 to 1789, the American Thomas Jefferson succumbed to the pleasure of ice cream and left with a recipe for vanilla ice cream before being elected President of the United States in 1801. Ice cream specialties would often be served at his table. In Philadelphia, Nancy Johnson created the crank ice-cream maker accessible to all in 1843. It was also in the 19th century that in France, the famous Baked Alaska, Peach Melba and Pear Belle-Hélène appeared and that innovations allowed the development of the ice cream we know today (invention of the first refrigeration machine, pasteurisation, etc.). The first ice cream factory opens in France in 1924!

Sorbets and ice cream at Relais Desserts

  • Alain ChartierMeilleur Ouvrier de France Glacier (Best Worker of Ice-Cream in France) and World Champion of Frozen Desserts, shows daring, creativity and great delicacy with his frozen éclairs (strawberry, tiramisu), frozen cakes (Cœur de breton, Dark), and sorbets as faithful as possible to the fruit. “When I hear customers say to me, it's like eating fruit, that's what makes me the happiest”. The chef prepares his sorbets with a high fruit content (up to 70%), good fruit and locally grown fruit (strawberries from Plougastel, Breton raspberries and apples)

His book Glaces toute l’année (Ice cream all year round) is a true bible on the subject!