Birth of the cool: The story behind the ice cream sandwich ...€¦ · open the wrapper. The ice...

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By Devra First Globe Staff , July 30, 2019, 11:14 a.m. 62 Birth of the cool: The story behind the ice cream sandwich, an icon at 120 bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/food-dining/2019/07/30/the-story-behind-ice-cream-sandwich- icon/YhGZQ0DsHd2TvKgMfMTscN/story.html I am standing in the middle of a room that looks like a cross between a Rube Goldberg machine and Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. There are networks of silver pipes overhead, shiny vats of citric acid and huge sacks of sweet whey, dials and switches and hoppers where hot-pink peppermint candy is crushed into bits. Conveyor belts ferry tubs and boxes and the containers called scrounds. Or is it squrounds? There is some debate over the spelling, but it’s pronounced the same either way. It describes the round-cornered square cartons that are particular to the ice cream trade. This is the whirring, clicking, clanking, buzzing heart of the HP Hood Ice Cream Plant, a long, squat brick building with a flagpole out front and the words “Ice Cream Division” spelled in white curlicue letters along one side. It’s one of the original Hood plants, here since the early ’60s. “There aren’t too many of those left,” says plant manager Peter Fabbri. “It’s one of the few.” In this 10,000-square-foot space, about 85 employees produce all kinds of goodness: the 60 or so Hood ice cream and sherbet flavors, the premium brand Brigham’s, Lactaid ice cream (Hood has an exclusive licensing arrangement), oat milk, and more. Get The Weekender in your inboxThe Globe's top picks for what to see and do each weekend, in Boston and beyond. I’m here for the ice cream sandwiches. Aug. 2 is National Ice Cream Sandwich Day, surely a holiday worth celebrating. And this year marks the ice cream sandwich’s 120th birthday. Or maybe it doesn’t. Many date the novelty (as single-serving frozen treats are called) to 1899, 1/9

Transcript of Birth of the cool: The story behind the ice cream sandwich ...€¦ · open the wrapper. The ice...

Page 1: Birth of the cool: The story behind the ice cream sandwich ...€¦ · open the wrapper. The ice cream is soft. The cookies are intensely crunchy. You can’t eat a just-made ice

By Devra First Globe Staff , July 30, 2019, 11:14 a.m. 62

Birth of the cool: The story behind the ice cream sandwich,an icon at 120

bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/food-dining/2019/07/30/the-story-behind-ice-cream-sandwich-icon/YhGZQ0DsHd2TvKgMfMTscN/story.html

I am standing in the middle of a room that looks like a cross betweena Rube Goldberg machine and Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Thereare networks of silver pipes overhead, shiny vats of citric acid andhuge sacks of sweet whey, dials and switches and hoppers wherehot-pink peppermint candy is crushed into bits. Conveyor belts ferrytubs and boxes and the containers called scrounds. Or is itsqurounds? There is some debate over the spelling, but it’spronounced the same either way. It describes the round-corneredsquare cartons that are particular to the ice cream trade.

This is the whirring, clicking, clanking, buzzing heart of the HP HoodIce Cream Plant, a long, squat brick building with a flagpole out frontand the words “Ice Cream Division” spelled in white curlicue lettersalong one side. It’s one of the original Hood plants, here since theearly ’60s. “There aren’t too many of those left,” says plant managerPeter Fabbri. “It’s one of the few.”

In this 10,000-square-foot space, about 85 employees produce all kinds of goodness: the 60or so Hood ice cream and sherbet flavors, the premium brand Brigham’s, Lactaid ice cream(Hood has an exclusive licensing arrangement), oat milk, and more.

Get The Weekender in your inboxThe Globe's top picks for what to see and do eachweekend, in Boston and beyond.I’m here for the ice cream sandwiches. Aug. 2 is National Ice Cream Sandwich Day, surely aholiday worth celebrating. And this year marks the ice cream sandwich’s 120th birthday. Ormaybe it doesn’t. Many date the novelty (as single-serving frozen treats are called) to 1899,

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but such things are hard to pinpoint.

From left to right, top to bottom: Blackbird Doughnuts' ice cream sandwich doughnut,Frozen Hoagies ice cream sandwich, Worden Hall's strawberry-rhubarb ice cream sandwich,and Molly Moo's ice cream sandwich. ((Dina Rudick/Globe Staff, handout, WendyMaeda/Globe Staff and Shirley Goh)

“What I know is that initially they were sold on the Bowery in New York by street vendors,”says author Jeri Quinzio, whose books include “Dessert: A Tale of Happy Endings” and “OfSugar and Snow: A History of Ice Cream Making.” These peddlers sold something called“hokey pokeys,” small slabs of ice cream that were placed between two pieces of paper tomake them easier to hold. “That was messy and not very convenient, so somebody came upwith the idea of using crackers or cookies.”

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The 10,000-square-foot Hood plant in Suffield, Conn., where various ice cream products areproduced.(Lane Turner/Globe Staff)

Written mentions of the treat start cropping up around the turn of the century. “It waswritten about a lot in newspapers,” Quinzio says. “This was quite the innovation. It sold for apenny, and you had to have a penny because they were making them so fast they didn’thave time to make change.”

In 1899, she says, the New York Mail and Express ran a story headlined “A New Sandwich.”“There are ham sandwiches and salmon sandwiches and cheese sandwiches and severalother kinds of sandwiches,” it began, “but the latest is the ice-cream sandwich. As a new fadthe ice cream sandwich might have made thousands of dollars for its inventor had thenovelty been launched by a well-known caterer, but strangely enough the ice-creamsandwich made its advent in an humble Bowery push-cart.”

A hopper full of sprinkles fed into a line producing ice cream sandwiches at the HP Hood IceCream Plant in Suffield, Conn.(Lane Turner/Globe Staff)

Well la-di-da. The street vendors catered to the hoi polloi, while the upper-class patronizedfancy confectioners. But soon enough, everyone was standing in line to try the Cronut of the1900s. A New York Sun story that ran Aug. 19 of that year stated that on Wall Street, “thebrokers themselves got to buying ice cream sandwiches and eating them in a democratic

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fashion side by side on the sidewalk with the messengers and the office boys.” Restaurantsthen began serving upscale versions made withsponge cake and the like. “Elite confectionersstarted using plates and forks in a dainty fashion,and saying [their sandwiches were] so muchbetter than the ones sold on the street,” Quinziosays.

(There is an oft-repeated story that a guy named Jerry Newberg invented the vanilla-and-chocolate version we know today and sold it at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh. I know this to beperhaps not quite accurate because I spoke with Newberg, along with son Bruce andgrandson Matt, who were visiting the 91-year-old. It’s true he did sell ice cream. He wouldzip around on a scooter selling the sandwiches for a nickel. “Ice cream, get your ice creamhere,” he trumpets into the phone: He’s still got it. He was also a radio announcer. He alsocalled square dances. He lost his arm in a car accident when he was 3, so he couldn’t go intothe service. “I tried everything at least once, which includes the girls,” he says. He believeshe invented the ice cream sandwich, so, Matt tells me, “as an ode to my grandfather, I citedhim as one of the inventors in Wikipedia.” This then made its way into plenty of articles anda couple of books as fact. “We’re not sure he’s actually the inventor,” Matt says, “but we callhim that because we love him.”)

The ice cream sandwich’s trajectory, from humble treat of the masses to elevated versionfor the elite, sounds familiar. Here we have the classic ice cream sandwich, as exemplifiedby Hood’s offering: an oblong of vanilla ice cream between two rectangular chocolatecookies neatly stippled with holes. All is as it should be. There is tradition here. There isritual. Are you a biter? Or do you linger, licking around the edges so the ice cream growssmaller and smaller and the cookies’ edges finally collapse around it? However we choose tolive our ice cream sandwich-consuming lives, we all meet the same end: sucking sticky

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cookie residue off our fingertips after everything else is gone. Thus it has been all of ourlives — visiting the ice cream truck, at camp, on hot evenings at dusk when the fireflies startto come out. And thus it should always be.

Operator Karie Jewett loaded wafers into a machine making and wrapping ice creamsandwiches.(Lane Turner/Globe Staff)

Yet we take a completely perfect product — affordable, delicious, already inhabiting its ownideal form — and begin to riff on it. In 2016, market-research firm Mintel declared the icecream sandwich the year’s “Hot Trend in Indulgence.” Chief among the reasons: socialmedia. Ice cream sandwiches are deeply photogenic, and the groovier they become, themore we want to post them.

And so we get delicious innovation. We get the gleeful, rainbow-sprinkled excess ofBlackbird Doughnuts’ made-to-order, soft serve-filled rounds: Pick any doughnut you like,then choose vanilla, chocolate, or swirl. (Last week Krispy Kreme announced theintroduction of scoop sandwiches, doughnut-infused ice cream inside a sliced doughnutwith customizable toppings. Slow to the punch.) We get childhood reconjured in Gracie’s IceCream’s version, vanilla pressed between marshmallow treats made with Fruity Pebbles or

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Cocoa Pebbles. We get food trucks such as the Cookie Monstah and Frozen Hoagies thattroll the city’s streets plying us with frozen desserts. And we get to watch pastry chefs runwith it on restaurant menus: macaron ice cream sandwiches at Yvonne’s, a chocolate cookieand mint ice cream sandwich with bitter poppy caramel on a menu honoring nonconformistwinemakers at Forage.

These are pure delights. But are they really ice cream sandwiches? Terminology matters.Remember the 2006 case that hinged on the definition of “sandwich”? Burritos, tacos, andquesadillas: not sandwiches, ruled the judge, paving the way for a Qdoba to open in aShrewsbury shopping center despite the objections of the Panera that was already there. Ascookbook author Chrissy Teigen once tweeted, “Ice cream sandwiches made with cookiesare garbage. The only ice cream sandwich should be the rectangular blocks with chocolatecakey bread with holes. This is not an opinion, it is a fact.”

Premium brand Brigham's ice cream passed along the line.(Lane Turner/Globe Staff)

There’s no need to mess with a classic. Ice cream sandwiches are doing fine. Last year Hoodsold more than 2 million boxes. The frozen-novelty category is seeing an increase in growth.“In 2018, frozen novelties reached $5.8 billion, a 4.1% increase over the prior year,”

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according to information provided by Mintel’s Beth Bloom, associate director of food anddrink reports. “Comparatively, traditional ice cream remained largely flat.” In 2021, Mintelpredicts, the frozen novelties segment will reach $6.4 billion, about 27 percent more than in2018.

Why are we enamored with such a throwback? Precisely because it is one. “Nostalgia hasalways been part of the food landscape,” says Robertson Allen, senior consultant at theHartman Group, which focuses on consumer behavior in the food and beverage market.“We’re having a nostalgic moment now for sure. There’s a turn to comfort foods in times ofuncertainty. There’s political uncertainty for a lot of people. Climate change is definitely athing that’s on more folks’ radar now, and people are feeling uncertain about what to doabout it. The big one is economic uncertainty. Millennials especially are feeling a lot morestrapped economically.”

But we can’t cling to the past forever. Even Hood, unusually nimble for company started in1846, is mixing things up. It now makes mini ice cream sandwiches, cookies ’n’ cream icecream sandwiches, mint chip ice cream sandwiches, unicorn confetti ice cream sandwiches.“It tastes just like Froot Loops,” Fabbri says of the last.

Back on the floor of the HP Hood Ice Cream Plant, wearing hairnets and hardhats and earprotection, we head for the ice cream sandwich line. The ice cream goes through arectangular pipe, which molds it into the appropriate shape. As it comes out of the pipe, twocookies surround the ice cream. It’s moving so fast that the sandwich breaks cleanly off, noneed for slicing. Then it gets wrapped, sealed, and sent down a conveyor for boxing. In a dayof production, the facility can turn out about 100,000 sandwiches.

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Ice cream sandwiches speed along the line at the HP Hood Ice Cream plant in Suffield,Conn.(Lane Turner/Globe Staff)

“There are so many ice cream fads out there,” Fabbri says. “In my mind, all these things arehere today, gone tomorrow. One thing that’s always going to be here is ice cream.”

He reaches out, plucks a newborn ice cream sandwich off the line, and hands it to me. Iopen the wrapper. The ice cream is soft. The cookies are intensely crunchy. You can’t eat ajust-made ice cream sandwich the way you would one from the store. If you bite right in,the filling will squirt out the sides. Instead, you have to break off a piece of the cookie andscoop out the ice cream.

It’s so delicious. It’s so fresh. But, forgive me, I’d rather have the soggy-sided, freezer-agedice cream sandwich we all know and love. It doesn’t count unless you get your hands dirty.

Devra First can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @devrafirst

©2019 Boston Globe Media Partners, LLC

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