Ice Cream is a type of dessert liked by all age group people. It comes in various forms like stone, soft serve, ice cream rolls or sundae ice creams. Each one of these has amazing flavor and unique aspects. Focusing on our ice cream “Soft Serve”, it is a dessert which is very different than other ordinary ice creams. In India, it is called Softy or Softee. It is a lower fat ice healthy ice cream, produced at lower temperature. It is made by introducing air to the mix at the time of freezing. The air content in soft serve varies from 0-60% of the total volume of product.
Different franchises claimed to have invented the softy/soft serve ice cream. Below is the long-winded history in peculiar steps:
[1] It was started in 1934 over the Memorial Day by Tom Carvel. Tom Carvel was the founder of Carvel brand and its franchise. Once, he got suffered by his punchered tire of ice cream van. He pulled his truck into parking area and started selling his melting ice creams to all the vacationers. He sold all the ice creams within 2 days. Then he realized, soft serve desserts and fixed location is a pretty much good idea for a new business.
[2] Carvel opened a store in 1936 and chose original broken down truck site for his store. There he developed a formula for amazing soft serve desserts. Fortunately, he got patented soft serve ice cream machines for his business.
[3] After Tom Carvel, Dairy Queen claimed for the invention of soft serve ice cream in 1938. JF McCullough and his son, Alex, invented their first soft serve formula near Moline, Illinois. Thus, they did first experiment and named it “all you can eat“. Within 2 hours, they served more than 16,000 dishes which means more than one every 4.5 second.
[4] In late 1940s, the UK PM Margaret Thatcher, worked as a chemist for J.Lyons and Co. (a food manufacturing company). At that time, the company was in partnership with US distributor, Mister Softee. Thus, they developed a soft-serve recipe which was compatible with American Machines.
[5] Thatcher’s role at Lyons was unclear. But she never stopped and kept working on company’s different products. These included ice creams, cakes or even pies. Infact, her political opponents spreaded an anecdote. According to this, by inventing these low grade soft serve ice creams, she is making higher profits.
[6] Manufacturers introduced air pumps in machines in 1960s.