The ice cream sandwich we know and love was born on the Bowery in New York sometime shortly before the turn of the 20th century. According to an 1899 news article in the New York Mail and Express calling it the latest sandwich, it began “in an humble Bowery pushcart and is sold for a penny.”
Before this anonymous pushcart vendor had the brilliant idea of putting a slab of ice cream between two crackers or cookies or wafers, street peddlers simply tucked slices of ice cream into a piece of paper. That treat, called a “hokey-pokey,” must have been messy and awkward to hold onto. The cookies made for a neater method as well as a delicious one. The new sandwich was so good, in fact, that another newspaper reported that on Wall Street “the brokers themselves got to buying ice cream sandwiches and eating them in a democratic fashion side by side on the sidewalk with the messengers and the office boys.”
Iran's take on the ice cream sandwich.
Before long, New York’s up-town restaurants began serving “dainty” ice cream sandwiches on a plate with an ice cream fork. The Country Gentleman, published in Albany, claimed that these sandwiches were “quite different from the article dear to a newsboy’s heart.”
But was the Bowery vendor the first person to come up with the idea? I recently discovered a cookbook published in 1894, Green’s Receipt Book, by Ralph Green of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, containing a recipe for “Ice Cream Sandwiches.” In his introduction, Green says he is an experienced confectioner and cake-baker and is confining himself to to the subjects of ice cream and cake in this book. He claims to have the “original” recipes for “Famous Portsmouth Orange Cake, Black cake, and Walnut cake, but doesn’t make any claims for his ice cream sandwich recipe.
Here is his recipe:
Cut into thin slices a pound cake or rich sponge cake, then spread them quickly with any kind of ice cream. Put the slices together. You may use two kinds of ice cream on each sandwich if you choose. Arrange on a dish and serve at once, or they may be served singly on tea plates. It the latter way, a small rose or some other flower may be laid on each sandwich.
Obviously this is a far cry from the slice of ice cream between two crackers bought for a penny and eaten on the streets of New York. It’s a formal fork-and-knife dessert rather than a walking-down-the-street treat.
In any event, the ice cream sandwich in its many and various forms is here to stay. In the early days, some peddlers used Graham crackers for their sandwiches, which would have horrified the famously ascetic Sylvester Graham. He didn’t like anything that smacked of enjoyment. These days, self-denial isn’t fashionable and ice cream sandwiches are made with anything from croissants to macarons to brownies to glazed doughnuts. Italians often scoop gelato into a brioche for breakfast.
Warm, just-out-of-the-oven cookies make for fabulous, though quick to melt, ice cream sandwiches. And who says the cookies have to be the same? Maybe one is chocolate chip and the other is oatmeal raisin. The ice cream, of course, can be any flavor under the sun. For a quick and easy DIY ice cream sandwich at home, just put a slice of ice cream between two crisp butter wafer cookies. And enjoy.
Chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry together in another ice cream sandwich.
Comments