Doctor Curmudgeon® One Scoop… Or Two?

By Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D. FAAP Doctor Eisman is in Family Practice in Aventura, Florida with her partner, Dr. Eugene Eisman, an internist/cardiologist

If you were at a dinner hosted by Dolley Madison at the White House in November, 1812, your dessert would have been quite unusual for the time.

There may have been the customary assortment of pastries, cakes, cookies. But, in addition to these delights (or instead of), there would have been ice cream!

There were those who thought that the gracious Dolley had actually invented this delicious wonder.

And others even thought that she had been the first person to ever serve this treat at a White House table.

Not true!

Since I cannot even remember when first I tasted this cooling refreshment, I began to think about when it was actually first served at the White House.

My heartfelt thanks go to our first First Lady, the indomitable Martha Washington,

Martha Dandridge Custis Washington was actually the first to serve ice cream in the White House.

Her husband, who happened to be President, loved ice cream. It was considered to be his favorite dessert.

In an article by John L. Smith, Jr. in the Journal of the American Revolution,” he writes that, “Washington bought an ice cream serving spoon and two ‘dble tin Ice Cream moulds.’ This was followed by ‘2 Iceries Compleat, twelve ice plates and thirty-six ice pots.’ An ‘ice pot’ was a small cup used for holding the ice cream since it was more liquid in colonial times.”

There is further proof that Martha Washington was the first to enhance the white House parties with ice cream.

Hilarie M. Hicks writes in the Montpelier’s Digital Doorway, that “Abigail Adams wrote that at Martha Washington’s Friday drawing rooms, ‘she gives Teas, Coffe, Cake, Lemonade & Ice Creams in summer.”

And it had been reported that President Washington spent about two hundred dollars on ice cream in the summer of 1790 which is about six thousand dollars today. He must have really loved this chilly dessert.

Only the wealthy could afford this confection. You needed to own a cow that was only used to make ice cream, because you needed a lot of milk. A cow could not give enough milk for both ice cream and then have some left to sell for a profit.

Then you needed to be very wealthy in order to purchase imported sugar and salt.

If that is not daunting enough, ice was absolutely necessary. Where would you get it? Of course, from a frozen river from which it was cut during the coldest winter temperatures.

And it had to be stored.

So, you needed an ice house.

But a mere ice house was not sufficient. You couldn’t just dump it in the ice house. The ice had to be insulated. So it was carefully layered with straw or sawdust.

After you had this all under control, you needed a lot of time to make the ice cream.

I found a recipe for making the kind of ice cream that would have been served at the president’s table, but just reading it made me too tired to copy it. Let me say that it took about twenty steps to create this delicacy at that time.

Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee, member of the Continental Congress and former major general of the Continental Army, said in his eulogy of George Washington “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

And I add, with the greatest respect, first to serve ice cream in the White House, courtesy of the superb First Lady, Martha Washington.

Dr. Curmudgeon suggests “Bitter Medicine”, Dr. Eugene Eisman’s story of his experiences–from the humorous to the intense—as a young army doctor serving in the Vietnam War.

Bitter Medicine by Eugene H. Eisman, M.D. –on Amazon

Doctor Curmudgeon® is Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D., a physician-satirist. This column originally appeared on SERMO, the leading global social network for doctors.
SERMO www.sermo.com

Click Here to Order Boxing Interviews Of A Lifetime By “Bad” Brad Berkwitt