Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things (80 page)

Ice Cream Soda
. The city of Philadelphia holds the distinction of being the point of entry of ice cream into the United States, as well as the home of the carbonated soda water concoction known as the ice cream soda or float.

It was Thomas Jefferson who tasted ice cream while ambassador to France, and returned to Philadelphia with a recipe. We know that Jefferson highly valued his “cream machine for making ice,” and that Dolley Madison’s White House dinners became renowned for their strawberry
bombe glacée
centerpiece desserts. By the early 1800s, Philadelphia was the country’s “ice cream capital” —because of the quantity of ice cream produced there; because of a much-loved vanilla-and-egg flavor called “Philadelphia”; and because of the city’s famous public ice cream “houses,” which would later be known as “parlors.” The ice cream soda was officially introduced and served in 1874 at the fiftieth anniversary of the city’s Franklin Institute.

Ice Cream Sundae and Whipped Cream
. From extant menus, food historians feel certain that the ice cream sundae debuted in the mid-1880s, about a decade after the ice cream soda, and that its name originated as a fanciful spelling of “Sunday,” the only day of the week that the dish was sold. Why only on Sunday?

Two theories have been advanced. In parts of New England during the 1880s, certain religious restrictions prevented the sale and consumption of soda water (believed to be akin to spirits) on the holiest day of the week. Subtracting carbonated water from an ice cream soda leaves scoops of ice cream and syrup, a new dish fit for a Sunday. Two cities—Evanston, Illinois, and Norfolk, Virginia—claim to be the home of the sundae, each offering as proof ice cream parlor menus of the day.

The second theory, less widely held, is that the sundae originated independent of the ice cream soda, and that it was always topped with chocolate syrup. The syrup was expensive, so for most families, the dish became a special one-day-a-week (Sunday) treat.

Whipped cream was not a standard sundae or ice cream soda topping for many decades, because the cream had to be beaten by hand. That changed in the early 1930s when Charles Goetz, a senior chemistry major at the University of Illinois, discovered a way to saturate cream with nitrous oxide or laughing gas, a breakthrough that produced not only the first spray-on whipped cream, but also spray-can shaving lather.

As a high school student, Goetz worked part-time in an ice cream parlor, where he was frequently put to whipping cream. In 1931, as a college senior, he also worked part-time, but in the university’s Diary Bacteriology Department, improving milk sterilization techniques. One day it occurred to him that bacteria might not develop and multiply in milk if the milk was
stored under high gas pressure. Experimenting, he discovered that milk released from a pressurized vessel foamed. As Goetz later wrote of his finding: “It was evident to me that if cream were used the foamed product would be whipped cream.”

There was a problem: every gas Goetz tested imparted its own undesirable flavor to the whipped cream. It was through a local dentist that he learned of odorless, tasteless, nonflammable nitrous oxide, used as an anesthetic in extracting teeth. Laughing gas led him to produce the world’s first commercial whipped cream from a can, ushering in the age of aerosols, which from a financial standpoint was nothing to laugh at.

Ice Cream Cone: 1904, St. Louis, Missouri

For centuries, ice cream was served in saucers and dishes and heaped on top of waffles, but there is no evidence for the existence of an edible pastry cone until 1904, at the St. Louis World’s Fair. Organized to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase, the fair cost fifteen million dollars (the same price as the Louisiana Purchase) and had a host of special attractions, including the John Philip Sousa Military Band and the first demonstration of electric cooking; it also offered its thirteen million visitors a large number of food concessions. Side by side in one area were a Syrian baker, Ernest Hamwi, specializing in waffles, and a French-American ice cream vendor, Arnold Fornachou.

Enter legend.

As one version of the story goes, Fornachou, a teenager studying to become a watch repairman, ran out of paper ice cream dishes and rolled one of Hamwi’s waffles into a cone, creating a new sensation. The alternate version credits Ernest Hamwi. An immigrant pastry chef from Damascus, Hamwi offered fairgoers a zalabia, a wafer-thin Persian confection sprinkled with sugar. He is supposed to have come to Fornachou’s aid with rolled zalabias.

Nonetheless, several newspaper accounts of the day unequivocally record that ice cream cones, or “World’s Fair cornucopias,” became a common sight at the St. Louis Exhibition. Cones were rolled by hand until 1912, when Frederick Bruckman, an inventor from Portland, Oregon, patented a machine for doing the job. In little more than a decade, one third of all the ice cream consumed in the United States was eaten atop cones.

References

In a work such as this, which is indebted to so many journals, magazines, newspapers, trade books, encyclopedias, and corporate archive files, it would be impractical to cite a reference for each and every fact. What would better serve a reader interested in any particular topic discussed in this book, I felt, is a list of the sources that I used in writing each chapter. That material is provided here, along with comments, when appropriate, as to a particular source’s availability (or lack of it), for considerable information, especially that deriving from folklore, was culled from private communications with cultural and social anthropologists, as well as from many dusty, out-of-print volumes borrowed from the bowels of libraries and archives.

To ensure accuracy, I have attempted to employ a minimum of two sources for the origin of a particular superstition, custom, or belief. In dealing with subjects that arose in prehistoric times and for which there are no unequivocal archaeological records (e.g., the origin of the “evil eye” superstition or the practice of the handshake), I sought out consensus opinions among folklorists. When these authorities substantially disagreed within their own discipline, I have labeled the information in the text as speculative and open to various interpretations, and have often presented two views.

A word about folklore, since it plays a crucial role in the origins of many of the “everyday things” discussed in the early chapters of this book.

No field of learning, perhaps, is more misunderstood than folklore, often defined as “the learning of nonliterate societies transmitted by oral tradition.” In the United States, the word “folklore” itself often conjures up an image of long-haired folk singers or grizzled old-timers spinning questionable yarns about a Paul Bunyan or a Johnny Appleseed.

Contrary to popular opinion, the field is an intellectual subject with its own substantial, worldwide body of scholarship. Professional folklorists distinguish between genuine folk tradition, founded on actual historic figures, and embellished, largely fictive, imitation of those traditions. While serious students of folklore do not always agree on the boundaries of their discipline, they tend to follow one of three approaches to their material: the Humanistic Perspective, which emphasizes the human carrier of “oral literature”; the Anthropological Perspective, which focuses on cultural norms, values, and laws that form a consistent pattern in a nonliterate society; and the Psychoanalytic Perspective, which views the materials of folklore neither aesthetically nor functionally but behavioristically. In the last category, myths, dreams, jokes, and fairy tales express hidden layers of unconscious wishes and fears. In assembling many chapters of this book, it was necessary to borrow from each of these three perspectives.

Throughout the following references, I acknowledge my indebtedness to the many professionals who generously offered their time and advice, and who in numerous instances also provided me with articles, reprints, and books.

1 From Superstition

Superstitions are defined as irrational beliefs, half beliefs, or practices that influence human behavior. In attempting to compile the origins of many of our most cherished superstitions, I’ve relied on numerous sources for a consensus view. I wish to express gratitude to folklorist Dr. Alan Dundes, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, for his thoughtful opinions, his collection of published papers on the origins of things as disparate as American Indian folklore and the Cinderella fairy tale, and his suggestions on other avenues of research. His article “Wet and Dry, the Evil Eye: An Essay in Semitic and Indo-European Worldview” is a definitive work on that superstitious belief and a prime example of a multiperspective approach to folklore material.

Additional works by Dr. Dundes that relate to this chapter:
Interpreting Folklore
, 1980, Indiana University Press;
Scared Narratives
, 1984, University of California Press;
The Study of Folklore
, edited by Dundes et al., 1965, Prentice-Hall.

Two volumes highly recommended for their scholarship, readability, and breadth of material are:
A Treasury of Superstitions
, by Dr. Claudia de Lys, 1957, Philosophical Library (reprinted in 1976 by Citadel Press under the title
A Giant Book of Superstitions
). A noted social anthropologist, Dr. de Lys spent more than three decades assembling the origins of superstitious beliefs from around the world. Though her treatment of each subject is brief, it is nonetheless quite comprehensive on a particular superstition’s possible roots. For the lay reader interested in a single volume covering the majority of superstitious practices, the de Lys book would be the most satisfying.

The second recommended volume, of a still more popular nature, is
Superstitious? Here’s Why
!, coauthored by Dr. de Lys and Julie Forsyth Batchelor, 1966, Harcourt Brace. Aimed primarily at young readers, the book is a selective condensation of Dr. de Lys’s scholarly material.

The reader interested in curious worldwide folktales that underlie many superstitious practices can turn to
Superstition and the Superstitious
, Eric Maple, 1972, A. S. Barnes;
Superstition in All Ages
, Jean Meslier, Gordon Press, a 1972 reprint of the original 1890 edition; and the thorough
Encyclopedia of Superstitions
, M. A. Radford, revised by Christina Hole, 1949, Philosophical Library; 1969, Greenwood Press; 1975, Hutchinson, London. The Radford book is particularly insightful concerning the rabbit’s foot superstition and the significance of the rabbit and hare to early societies, especially with reference to the origin of Easter customs.

A general overview of American folklore, including home-grown superstitious beliefs, appears in
American Folklore
, Richard Dorson, 1959, University of Chicago Press.

Highly recommended in this area are two books by folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand:
Study of American Folklore
, 1968, Norton; and
The Mexican Pet: Urban Legends
, 1986, Norton. Brunvand, a former editor of the
Journal of American Folklore
, explores the reasons why myths and superstitious beliefs take hold of the human imagination. He is often concerned with the humanistic perspective to folklore material, stressing the tale and the teller for their inherent worth and enjoyment, but he also ventures into the psychoanalytic realm, exploring legends and beliefs that derive from primal and universal human fears such as suffocation, castration, and blinding.

Many superstitious beliefs have religious roots—the supposed good fortune deriving from a horseshoe, for instance, is linked to a legend surrounding St. Dunstan. In such cases, I have attempted to substantiate the folklore story, whole or in part, using two encyclopedic books on religious figures:
The Oxford Dictionary of Popes
, J. N. D. Kelly, 1986, Oxford University Press; and
The Avenel Dictionary of Saints
, Donald Attwater, 1981, Avenel Books. Each volume is exhaustive and fascinating in its own right. In this same vein, I found helpful
Christianity or Superstition
, by Paul Bauer, 1966, Marshall Morgan and Scott.

2 By Custom

This chapter concerns the origins of why we do what we do, and its content derives in large part from studies in folklore, cultural anthropology, and etymology, for the original meaning of a word (such as “honeymoon”) often says much about the tradition surrounding the practice it describes. I am indebted to Dr. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, folklorist and chair-person of Performing Arts at New York University, for her many helpful references.

Through the influence of tradition we perform many actions so habitually
that their origins and original significance are seldom, if ever, questioned. Dr. R. Brasch, a rabbinical scholar, insightfully investigates numerous human customs, from marriage practices to death traditions, in
How Did It Begin
, 1976, David McKay. His book, unfortunately out of print, is well worth a visit to a local library. Rabbi Brasch’s linguistics background—he is a student of twelve languages, among them Babylonic-Assyrian, Arabic, Syriac, and Persian—provides a firm foundation for many subjects explored in this chapter.

A comprehensive book to browse, from which I gleaned many facts and verified others, is
Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology, and Legend
, edited by Maria Leach and Jerome Fried, 1980.

For birthday practices:
The Lore of Birthdays
, Ralph and Adeline Linton, 1952, Henry Schuman. For a fascinating history of the song “Happy Birthday to You” and the legal dispute surrounding its authorship and subsequent royalty rights, see
New York Times
, “Dr. Patty S. Hill of Columbia University Dies,” May 26, 1946; and
Louisville
(Kentucky)
Courier
, “Their Song Becomes a Universal One,” Rhea Talley, February 15, 1948. For a capsule overview of the song, see
The Book of World-Famous Music
, James Fuld, 3rd edition, 1985, Dover.