The Democratization of Ice Cream

 

QUESTION: When I was a kid, my family had an ice cream machine. Just about every Sunday afternoon, especially when it was really hot, my father would get out the machine and make ice cream. And I helped. We made all different flavors, depending on the kind of fruit that was in season. My job was to crank the machine. Boy, was that hard because I had to keep going for at least 45 minutes. When I got tired, my dad would take over. I haven’t had homemade ice cream for a long time but recently saw an old ice cream maker for sale at a flea market. What can you tell me about antique ice cream makers. Are they worth anything or are they just junk?

ANSWER: There’s nothing like homemade ice cream. With electric ice cream makers, it’s easy to make it. But there’s a nostalgia connected to the old hand-cranked machines. 

Until the early 19th century, ice cream remained a rare and exotic dessert enjoyed mostly by the wealthy. Ingredients and technology, including ice harvesting and the invention of the insulated icehouse around 1800, plus the increased affordability of sugar made making ice cream at home for ordinary people more affordable.

In 1843, New Yorker Nancy M. Johnson applied for a patent for her hand-cranked ice cream freezer, called the Artificial Freezer. It had a movable crank that rotated two  adjacent broad, flat slates containing an array of holes, which assisted in churning the cream, making the mixture more uniform, while also making it easier to remove the ice crystals in the interior walls of the cylindrical container in which the spatulas fit. These metal spatulas, attached to a pipe called the “dasher,” were then attached to the handle crank protruding out from the Artificial Freezer. And by inserting a border into the container that held the mixture, Johnson made it possible to create two flavors at the same time.

She invented her ice cream churn to cut down on the time it took to make ice cream, which was originally a labor intensive process involving many steps. President Thomas Jefferson used an 18-step recipe. However, the resulting ice cream had to be eaten immediately since people had no form of refrigeration at the time.

The machine sold fast, but despite Johnson’s success with the Artificial Freezer, she sold the rights of her patent to William G. Young from Baltimore for $200. He then improved on its original design, and others soon followed with 70 improvements of their own. 

Smaller domestic ice-cream makers made from the 1880s usually had a metal inner pail fitted with a paddle attached to a crank handle, which sat inside a wooden bucket containing a freezing mixture of ice and salt. The user poured cream into the inner pail where it was beaten and churned as it froze.

The same year as Nancy M. Johnson filed her patent, London resident Thomas Masters created the Ice Cream Apparatus which featured interchangeable parts. The machine could be set up for home use, producing blocks of ice, ice cream, flavored ice, and cooling drinks and wine. Thomas added special churns to his ice cream maker to ensure a proper beating process, creating the smoothness and fineness necessary to ensure the ice cream and flavored ice didn’t separate. The Ice Cream Apparatus had separate ice preserving containers for butter, fish, game, etc., plus cold storage spaces for beer and wine.

To make ice cream with one of these antique ice cream makers, the user needed to pour the ice cream mixture into the inner pail where it was churned and beaten as it froze. When filling the bucket, the user needed to layer the salt and ice, going heavy on the salt between the layers.

Mixing ice with salt lowered the ice’s melting point, so even when the ice melted, its temperature remained below the normal freezing point of 0 degrees Celsius---32 degrees Fahrenheit.

After adding the ice cream mixture and closing the metal canister, the next step was cranking to help aerate and smooth the mixture. This also prevented the separation of the ice cream’s  ingredients.

Ice cream makers stamped with the designer’s or manufacturer’s mark have a higher value than identical items with no signature. Antique White Mountain ice cream makers, for example, carry the company’s name. The manufacturer’s mark verifies that the antique ice cream maker is genuine and not a copy.

More than anything else, demand determines the value of an antique ice cream maker.  A 170-year-old antique ice cream maker could be worthless if no one wants it. However, a 120-year-old ice cream maker could have a higher value if demand for it is higher.

Condition is also very important in determining the value of an antique ice cream maker. It needs to be checked for flaws, including cracks, missing components, and excessive wear. And while a minor nick may be negligible, a major crack on the bucket that holds the ice may lower the value considerably.

Antiques made in the early 1900s may be less valuable than those made in the 1850s. The reason for this is that the antiques from the 1850s are rarer than those made in the 20th century. More antique ice cream makers from the early 20th century that are in good condition are available than are well-maintained antiques from the mid 19th century.

The White Mountain brand dates back to 1872 when Thomas Sands made improvements to Johnson’s design and started his company in Laconia, New Hampshire. White Mountain antique ice cream makers currently available date to 1923 and sell for $100 to nearly $400.

Acme started making ice cream makers in the early 1900s. Going by the name “Acme Ice Cream Freezers,” the brand featured a metal can surrounding the ice cream canister. Models currently on the market range in price from around $20 to $125.

As long as an antique manual ice cream maker is in good shape it can still be used. However, those that are part of a collection shouldn’t be used to make ice cream. In that case, it’s better to let the more efficient electric models to the work.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about the "The World of Art Nouveau" in the 2022 Spring Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Rocking Into Butter

QUESTION: I recently purchased an odd sort of butter churn at a local antique show. It’s a horizontal container suspended by straps to a truncated wooden frame. The only type of butter churn I’ve heard of is the vertical cylindrical type. It has the name and location of the company that made it—"Davis Swing Churn, No. 2, Vermont Farm Machine Co., Bellows Falls, Vt."—painted on both sides. Can you tell me something about it?

ANSWER: What you have is what’s commonly called a “rocking churn.” It seems women used to hook the churn to a rocker using a hook and a length of rope and as they rocked, they pulled the churn from side to side, agitating the cream inside.

To better understand how this type of churn works, it’s important to know how the churning process works. Women used a variety of churns to turn cream into butter. The most common type of churn is the vertical churn into which a person inserted a pole inserted through the lid.

The agitation of the cream, caused by the mechanical motion of the device, disrupts the milk fat. This movement breaks down the membranes that surround the fats in the cream, forming clumps known as butter grains. These butter grains, during the process of churning, fuse with each other and form larger fat globules. The mechanical action introduces air bubbles into these fat globules. The butter grains become more dense as fat globules attach to them while action forces the air out of the mixture. This process creates buttermilk. With constant churning, the fat globules eventually form solid butter and separate from the buttermilk. The butter maker then drains off the buttermilk and squeezes the butter to eliminate excess liquid, forming it into a solid mass.

Historians believe the word “butter” came from the Greek word boutyron, meaning “cow cheese.” That’s because goat’s milk doesn’t work well to produce butter because of its lower fat content.  Evidence for the use of butter dates back as early as 2000 B.C.E.. And the butter churn, itself, may have existed as early as the 6th century A.D. Historians also believe that early nomads may have discovered butter by accident after having filled skin bags with milk and loading them onto pack animals. The movement of the animals shook the bags, creating butter.

Before commercial dairies began producing butter, every home had tools to make its own. Butter churns came in a variety of styles. The most common is a container, made of stoneware in the mid-19th century and later of wood, where the person making the butter creates it by moving a pole, inserted into the lid, in a vertical motion. This type of churn is also known as an “up-and-down”’ churn, plunger churn, plumping churn, or knocker churn.  The staff used in the churn is called a dash, dasher-staff, churn-staff, churning-stick, or plunger.

Another common type of butter churn is the paddle churn. The butter maker turned a handle that operated a paddle inside a container, causing the cream to become butter. Yet another type is the barrel churn. This consists of a barrel turned onto its side with a crank attached. The crank either turns a paddle device inside the churn, as in the paddle churn, or turns the whole barrel, whose action converts the milk to butter.

Finally, there the rocking chair butter churn, invented by Alfred Clark. This device, invented by Alfred Clark, consisted of a barrel attached to a rocking chair. While the rocking chair moved, the barrel moved and churned the milk within into butter. Today, a rocking butter churn in good condition sells for over $500.