There was a time in Ireland when ice-cream was a simple affair. People could chose from a vanilla cone – with a flake and sprinkles if their ship had come in, or a handful of dubiously flavoured ice-pops sitting alongside fish fingers in shop fridges, if they were still waiting for that ship to dock.
It’s all change now, and ice-cream shops such as Scrumdiddly’s, in Dún Laoghaire and Donabate, are leading the charge, serving massive cups of soft whip ice-cream with flavours and toppings which the children of the seventies could scarcely have imagined.
Top of the Scrumdiddly pile this week is a concoction which promises real dairy ice-cream, its own melted toffee crisp sauce, fresh cream, toffee crisp chunks and a scoop of double caramel. The calorie count can only be imagined.
Ice-cream parlours are not just going down a treat in South Co Dublin, of course. One of the earliest of the new wave of high end ice-cream makers were the Murphys of Dingle.
Sean and Kieran Murphy have been producing hand-made ice-creams in Kerry since the dawn of this millennium and they now have two shops in Dingle, having opening a new outlet earlier this summer. They also have a branch in Dublin and sell their tubs in shops across the country.
We called earlier this week to find out what was hot in their super-chilled world. “At the moment, Dingle Sea Salt is selling very well,” we were told. “And after that, it’s Irish coffee and then butterscotch.” And what’s wrong with vanilla, we demanded to know. “Ah it’s usually in the top three, but it has dropped to five this summer, for some reason.”
It is not only ice-cream parlours that have lost the run of themselves when it comes to tarting up a summer treat – department stores are getting in on the act. Until the middle of August, Arnotts on Henry Street in Dublin is giving people the chance to pimp their ice-creams as part of what is being called a Make My Magnum experience. For a fiver you can add all sorts of toppings to the chocolate and vanilla ice-cream.
Ice-cream is one of the oldest and most enduring desserts we have, and milk-based ice-creams were first introduced to humankind in the 10th century. They did not make it to this part of the world – well, Italy to be more precise, until the 13th century, when Marco Polo brought the notion home from China. Bless him.
It took another 500 or so years for ice-cream to be married to the cone. The first ice-cream cone was made in the US in 1896 by an Italian by the name of Italo Marchiony. He cottoned on to the cone in New York city and took out a patent in December 1903.
A year later, at the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair, Ernest A Hamwi came up with the same idea entirely independently and arguably did more to spread the notion. He was selling crisp waffles at a stall next to an ice-cream vendor at the fair. The ice-cream man’s dessert was so popular that he ran out of bowls. Hamwi rolled his wafer-like waffles in the shape of a cone and off the pair went.
At the first sight of a bit of sun, Irish people reach for the freezer cabinet. According to a report released by Tesco earlier this summer, sales of ice-cream jump by as much as 60 per cent when the sun is shining. It doesn’t even have to be that warm, and once temperatures top 17 degrees, sales soar.
The same report found that Icebergers are Ireland’s most popular ice-cream. It may not have occupied the number one slot – or even the number two position (that went to the humble Loop-the-loop) – but the big winner was Magnum. There were four flavours from this range in the top 10. The classic, almond and white chocolate varieties rounded out the top five, while the new raspberry Magnum was the 10th most popular choice, according to Tesco.
If you’d rather not know how many calories goes into an ice-cream, look away now. Magnum’s raspberry ice has 276 calories and 24 grams of sugar, which is the equivalent of six teaspoons. A Rolo ice has 247 calories and 19.7g of sugar, or just under five teaspoons, while an Oreo cone has 200 calories and 15.5g of sugar.
According to ice-cream brand HB, Irish people devoured more than 200,000 ice-creams on each of the five days of the heatwave at the end of June. That works out at nearly two and a half ice-creams every single second for the duration of the sunny spell.
Remember when there was just the one Cornetto? And remember how brilliant it was? Well, now there are a whole lot more than one to chose from. There are peanut, extra chocolate, lemon, strawberry and cookie options. It’s enough to make your head spin.
