In the first of a weekly series of tales from the ice cream parlour, Kieran Murphycelebrates a pioneer from Dingle

Many legends surround the origins of ice cream in the West. Some say Marco Polo brought the first recipe back from China, others point to Emperor Nero dispatching runners to the Apennine mountains to fetch snow, which was sumptuously flavoured with nuts and honey. There's the story that Catherine de Medici brought the French a tasty dowry of ice cream recipes when she arrived to marry the Duke of Orleans, and the English credit the inventive kitchen staff of King Charles I, who wowed the court with their ice cream creations. King Charles offered his chef a pension in exchange for keeping the recipe a secret. A pension? Yeah, right. The chef divulged all.

Here, in Dingle, there were also pioneers. As with many artisan foods that have recently found their way back into fashion, ice cream used to be hand-crafted by multiple vendors in west Co Kerry. Long before Murphys Ice Cream opened its doors on Strand Street in 2000, a woman named Nell Grandfield made ice cream from scratch in the very same building and delighted generations of customers.

Born in 1896 to a family on John Street, Nell emigrated to England, where she worked for years as a dressmaker. When she inherited the building from an uncle in the 1940s, she returned to Co Kerry, happy to leave behind the needle and thread. Her uncle sold religious goods, but Nell had different ideas. She turned the shop into a sweets emporium and soon began making ice cream.

Bernard Goggin, who grew up down the street from Nell, explained to me how she used fresh cream from the Dingle creamery and ice made in blocks by the Houlihan brothers on Dykegate Lane. "Ice cream was a real treat," he said, smiling.

Another fan, Michael O'Connor, remembers coming into town as a boy on a horse and trap for a twice-weekly film at the cinema. "Most people would have stopped at Nell's on their way in for an ice cream or a chocolate. She served her ice cream on a wafer or in a dish with fruit. It was sixpence or eight pence at the time."

Nell kept her shop open until the mid-1970s, and most people who knew her then speak fondly of her, but times had changed. Tastes evolved, pre-packaged ice creams came in, and when Nell died in 1982, the old way of making ice cream went with her.

Still, tradition doesn't die out easily. Before too long, John Greany launched Strawberry Fields, an ice cream shop on Green Street (now closed), and less than 20 years after Nell shut her doors, my brother and I leased her shop. We didn't know about Nell when we crafted our first flavours in her kitchen, but we loved the shop the minute we saw it. We soon met her former customers and heard the stories. Many of them still come in to Murphys, and although our equipment is more modern, our ingredients more exotic, and we cost more than sixpence, I do think that Nell would have approved.

Nell's Fruit Cup

Ingredients: one scoop vanilla ice cream; a generous dash of raspberry coulis or cordial; a few tablespoons of fresh fruit salad or fruit cocktail; a wafer cut diagonally.

What to do: 1 Scoop the ice cream into a glass dish;

2 Spoon over the fruit;

3 Add the raspberry sauce; 4 Top with the wafer; 5 Devour!

For a more gourmet take on this dessert, use a fresh fruit salad instead of the fruit cocktail, make your own vanilla ice cream (recipe on www.icecreamireland.com), and use the following raspberry coulis instead of the cordial. It's simple to make, tart, and scrumptious with ice cream!

Murphy's Raspberry Coulis (150 ml)

Ingredients: one small punnet (125g) fresh, ripe raspberries; two tablespoons of sugar; one teaspoon of fresh lime juice.

What to do:

1 Combine all the ingredients in a food processor or blender, and puree until smooth; 2 Press the puree through a fine-meshed sieve, using a rubber spatula or the back of a wooden spoon until only the seeds are left; 3 Discard seeds; 4 The raspberry coulis will last up to three days refrigerated, but I'm betting you'll eat it straight away!

Kieran Murphy is director of Murphys Ice Cream, in Co Kerry