In the Good Old Summertime: A Memoir of the Ice Cream Soda
One of the most delightful desserts that will ever tickle your palette in the summertime is the ice cream soda. This combination is sheer genius - a rich, creamy, refreshingly cold ice cream, floating like a dream on top of a flavorful soda to quench your thirst.
We have to return to a scorching hot day in 1874 to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where crowds were attending the sesquicentennial celebration. Mr. Robert M. Green was to be one of the vendors of flavored sodas for libation and his competition was keen. A soda fountain peddler who was Robert’s great rival was in proprietorship of a bigger and fancier soda fountain. Mr. Green pondered a way to outdo his rival. How would he make his flavored and carbonated drinks more appealing to make them the most popular and sought after?
He envisaged the soda of sodas. He would serve vanilla ice cream with his soda water with 16 different flavored syrups to choose from! It was an overnight success. Mr. Green’s sales climbed as the word spread. He was so proud of his invention, that in his will he asked his family to have “Originator of the Ice Cream Soda” engraved on his tombstone.
Soda jerks all over America were now serving the ice cream soda at sweet shops and drug stores where there was tremendous pride in creating these revitalizing confections. Beautiful long marble counters saw countless romances started as young lovers shared ice cream sodas, lips near each other, sipping the sweet soda and sharing the creamy frozen ice cream treat.
Since 1874 the ice cream soda has evolved countless times. The chocolate ice cream soda with vanilla ice cream is most widely known but now you can enjoy your soda with any ice cream flavor your heart desires. There are also root beer floats with vanilla ice cream and brown cows with root beer and chocolate ice cream. Added to the list are coke floats that combine coke and ice cream of your choice, snow whites composed of 7Up and vanilla ice cream. Ice cream soda passion has swept the world as well, with the Vaca Dourada in Brazil that adds vanilla ice cream to guarana soda. There are coke afloats in Scotland, spiders in Australia and on and on.
Next week, find right here on our blog our delicious Chocolate Goddess “Black Raspberry Rave” recipe and photo.
