A few years ago, I read a newspaper article recommending the best electric ice cream makers. It was a cute little Cusinart that also made yogurt and sherberts. I just had to have one.
I had this romantic view of making my own ice cream with natural ingredients; none of that stuff from the grocery store. So I searched to find the cheapest one, bought it, brought it home – and left it in my pantry.
That ice cream maker came to mind a week or so ago when I spotted an old-fashioned hand crank ice cream maker at auction. It was practically hidden away under an outside table at one of my favorite auction houses.
It didn’t look to be in very good shape: The narrow metal bands around the outside were rusted, and the green paint on the wooden bucket had worn away in spots. On one side was the faint outline of a label. The hand crank identified it as a White Mountain Freezer.
Inside, though, the dashers, scraper and can – I learned the names of the parts by Googling – were clean and in good condition. With a little cleaning, the ice cream maker would be ready for use.
One auction-goer wondered what was the point of making your own ice cream when you could easily buy it at Cold Stone or a lot of other ice cream shops.
Why? Because the idea of sitting for up to an hour cranking your own ice cream is a lovely image. Well, at least in my head. I could imagine it being very popular at a family reunion, having the kids taking turns churning or even the adults if you can get them talking and remembering about when they churned and the sweet results of their hard work.
I have a sense of my family having a hand crank ice cream maker but I don’t have any memories of it. I’m sure that many other Baby Boomers do. It was an economical way of having ice cream around.
On the web, I found a manual for the White Mountain maker (which, according to its logo, was first made in 1853) that identified a woman named Nancy Johnson of New York as the inventor of the ice cream maker. It was a “crude, but easy-to-use” apparatus that she did not patent, according to the manual.
Wikipedia stated, though, that she was from Philadelphia and received a patent in 1843. Another site said she was from New Jersey and got the patent in 1846. A third acknowledged some of the discrepancies. Like Wikipedia, it stated that she got a patent in 1843. An African American man named Augustus Jackson is credited with inventing the modern process of making ice cream in 1832.
The White Mountain manual also offered recipes for making ice cream using an electric or hand cranker, including vanilla, chocolate, pina colada and strawberry, along with some helpful tips. You’ll need some ice and rock salt for the hand crank.
I found new makers for sale on several sites, including Williams Sonoma. The electric was going to $230 and the hand crank for $170. Amazon was selling an electric one for $178. Vintage ones were going for $10 to $100 on eBay.
At auction, the ice cream maker went for $15.
This wasn’t the first time I’d found ice cream paraphernalia at auction. Last year, I came across some ice cream and milk shake posters that made me want to go out and get a burger and a shake. So I did, at one of those faux 1950s restaurants, and wrote about the experience.
As for my Cusinart, I checked my pantry and it’s still there in its original plastic wrapping. Maybe I’ll bring it out this summer and pair it with that Weber grill I bought at auction a few years ago and never used.
Yes I remember these. We made Ice cream 2 or 3 times a month in the hot summer months. My first memories of them I was too small to crank the freezer. Whoever happened to be cranking the freezer had me sit on it to steady it as the handle became harder to turn as the ice cream froze. By the time the ice cream was ready you could hardly turn the handle. We had peach trees and always had fresh peaches to make peach ice cream which seemed to be the favorite around our place. We always had big family get togethers on July 4th and labor day and usually had 2 freezers of ice cream. Each freezer made 1 gallon of ice cream. I am almost 80 yrs old now and remembering brings tears to my eyes as almost all my relatives who joined us for the ice cream parties are now deceased. I had 2 uncles who were WW2 vets and a third who was drafted and sent to Germany with the occupation forces a couple of yrs. after the war. We had a big ice cream supper going away party when he left. I was about 10 yrs old then and teased him unmercifully about being a dogface. He told me not to worry, my time was coming and it did 10 yrs later.
What a wonderful story. I always hope that the things I write about revive memories for those who lived with them. Thank you so much for sharing yours. Sherry