A scoop of history

One of the very best "Andy Griffith Show" episodes was the one called "Bailey's Bad Boy," (Season 2, episode 15, January 15, 1962) in which Bill Bixby plays young playboy Ron Bailey, who gets tossed in the Mayberry hoosegow for speeding and finally grows up with a nudge from Andy.

Forced to spend the day with the Taylors, young Ron is amazed to find that people actually make ice cream with a home freezer, and for anyone who ever had homemade ice cream back in the day, it reminds us of how great summer was when summers were sweet, pre-covid.

BUT! If you are like me and Thomas Jefferson, you love your ice cream so you won't mind going to a little colonial-style trouble and making your own! Old Tom learned to love ice cream in France, and when he returned to the fledgling US from there in 1789, he planned to make his own.

In 1791, he went on Ye Olde Amazone and ordered 50 vanilla bean pods, which, as he knew, are "much used in seasoning ice creams." And, before the days of Whirlpool home freezers, he needed to save ice from the previous winter, so he built an ice house at his house (Monticello) in 1802. Every winter, he and his crew went to the Rivanna River and sawed off 62 big ice blocks to store in there and use all summer. (He wrote in 1815 that his supply lasted until October.)

History records that George Washington wrote about ice cream, but Jefferson was kind enough to leave us a recipe, so here's the deal (from the Library of Congress)


Ice Cream.
2. bottles of good cream.
6. yolks of eggs.
1/2 lb. sugar

mix the yolks & sugar
put the cream on a fire in a casserole, first putting in a stick of Vanilla.

when near boiling take it off & pour it gently into the mixture of eggs & sugar.

stir it well.

put it on the fire again stirring it thoroughly with a spoon to prevent it's (sic) sticking to the casserole.

when near boiling take it off and strain it thro' a towel.

put it in the Sabottiere*

then set it in ice an hour before it is to be served. put into the ice a handful of salt.

put salt on the coverlid of the Sabottiere & cover the whole with ice.

leave it still half a quarter of an hour.

then turn the Sabottiere in the ice 10 minutes

open it to loosen with a spatula the ice from the inner sides of the Sabotiere.

shut it & replace it in the ice

open it from time to time to detach the ice from the sides

when well taken (prise**) stir it well with the Spatula.

put it in moulds, justling it well down on the knee.

then put the mould into the same bucket of ice.

leave it there to the moment of serving it.

to withdraw it, immerse the mould in warm water, turning it well till it will come out & turn it into a plate.



*The sabottiere is the canister still in use in many homes. In those days, they didn't have a crank, so "turn the Sabottiere in the ice 10 minutes," meant to have someone turn it upside down and back again many times.





This will be the best vanilla ice cream you ever had, so please invite me over to taste it! I'm free most nights.

**prise is the old form of "pry," meaning to move something with force.  You didn't have to pry that out of me!