The mixture is cooled below the freezing point of water and stirred to incorporate air spaces and prevent detectable ice crystals from forming.

The addition of salt lowered the melting point of ice, drawing heat from the cream and allowing it to freeze.

[16][8] In 1665, the Catalogue des Marchandises rares..., edited in Montpellier by Jean Fargeon,[22] listed a type of frozen sorbet.

According to L'Isle des Hermaphrodites,[23] the practice of cooling drinks with ice and snow had already emerged in Paris, particularly in the court, during the 16th century.

[24] In 1682, Le Nouveau confiturier françois provided a recipe for a specific type of ice cream, called "neige de fleur d'orange".

[17] Recipes for sorbetti saw publication in the 1694 edition of Antonio Latini's Lo Scalco alla Moderna (The Modern Steward).

Elias Ashmole described the dishes served at the Feast of St George at Windsor for Charles II in 1671 and included "one plate of ice cream".

When you wou'd freeze any Sort of Fruit, either Cherries, Raspberries, Currants, or Strawberries, fill your Tin-Pots with the Fruit, but as hollow as you can; put to them Lemmonade, made with Spring-Water and Lemmon-Juice sweeten'd; put enough in the Pots to make the Fruit hang together, and put them in Ice as you do Cream.The 1751 edition of The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse includes a recipe for ice cream: "H. GLASSE Art of Cookery (ed.

[17] In 1769 Domenico Negri, an Italian confectioner, founded a business in Berkeley Square London which would become famous for its ice creams.

Records, kept by a merchant from Chatham street, New York, show George Washington spending approximately $200 on ice cream in the summer of 1790.

[40] Small-scale hand-cranked ice cream freezers were invented in England by Agnes Marshall and in America by Nancy Johnson in the 1840s.

[42] Ice cream became popular and inexpensive in England in the mid-19th century, when Swiss émigré Carlo Gatti set up the first stand outside Charing Cross station in 1851.

Marshall's Larger Cookery Book of Extra Recipes (1891) and Fancy Ices (1894) and gave public lectures on cooking.

One important development in the 20th century was the introduction of soft ice cream, which has more air mixed in, thereby reducing costs.

In the United States, chains such as Dairy Queen, Carvel, and Tastee-Freez helped popularize soft-serve ice cream.

Technological innovations such as these have introduced various food additives into ice cream, most notably the stabilizing agent gluten,[50] to which some people have an intolerance.

Recent awareness of this issue has prompted a number of manufacturers to start producing gluten-free ice cream.

Many farmers and plantation owners, including US Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, cut and stored ice in the winter for use in the summer.

[56] French confectioners refined the pot-freezer method, making ice cream in a sorbetière [fr] (a covered pail with a handle attached to the lid).

[57] An unusual method of making ice cream was done during World War II by American fighter pilots based in the South Pacific.

The cans were fitted with a small propeller, this was spun by the slipstream and drove a stirrer, which agitated the mixture while the intense cold of high altitude froze it.

Ice cream can be purchased in large cartons (vats and squrounds) from supermarkets and grocery stores, in smaller quantities from ice cream shops, convenience stores, and milk bars, and in individual servings from small carts or vans at public events.

A mouse study in 2015 shows that two commonly used dietary emulsifiers carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) and polysorbate 80 (P80) can potentially cause inflammatory bowel diseases, weight gain, and other metabolic syndromes.

[71] Around the world, different cultures have developed unique versions of ice cream, suiting the product to local tastes and preferences.

One of its most well-known ice creams is the kulfi available in both usual and local flavours like mango, rose, badam (almond), strawberry, kesar (saffron), pistachio, chocolate and can contain nuts, rose petals, saffron stalks, and pieces of other sweets like rabdri and gulab jamun.

Golas are summer treat consisting of shaved ice packed into a popsicle form on a stick and soaked in flavoured sugar syrup, a popular choice being kala khatta, made from the sweet and sour jamun fruit.

[73] In Indonesia, a type of traditional ice cream called es puter or "stirred ice cream" is made from coconut milk, pandanus leaves, sugar—and flavours that include avocado, jackfruit, durian, palm sugar, chocolate, red bean, and mung bean.

It is made by freezing dairy milk with mastic and sahlab (salep), giving it a distinctive stretchy and chewy texture.

In the United Kingdom, 14 million adults buy ice cream as a treat, in a market worth £1.8 billion (according to a report produced in 2024).

Reliable evidence proves that ice cream cones were served in the 19th century, and their popularity increased greatly during the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904.