Ice ice baby

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Posted at 12:22PM, 03 April 2009 by Stuart Walton - Food and wine writer

Barely had I risen from my chaise longue and asked the butler to prepare my tisane the other afternoon, than I heard a strange heaven-sent music fill the air. Imagining perhaps that I was still in a drowsing state, I pinched myself but no. I was wide awake, and hearing something like the melody from the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy somewhere outside. Parting the curtains to peer out, I found the street full of laughing, running urchins, pouring forth with single-minded intent, lightening the dull day with their joyful cries, each clutching a copper penny as though it were the means to insure life itself.

Actually, they were each clutching a grubby fiver, but that's inflation for you. The ice cream van had come to our street. In 15 years of living in my part of Brighton, I have neither seen nor heard an ice cream van, but suddenly this one was turning up practically every day - at least while the spring sunshine lasted. It always comes at around 4 o'clock, presumably to catch the kids at school hometime, but presenting a headache for those parents conscientious enough not to want the little ones ruining their teatime appetites with sugar.

The happy jangle of the ice cream van was one of the sounds that brightened childhood. Hard was the parental heart that wouldn't let you have the money for a drippy cornet when it came to your street. The ice cream van never lacked for business (half its customers were the softer-hearted parents themselves after all), and its wares tasted all the more opulent for the fact that their arrival was totally unexpected. Ten seconds before it turned the corner, nobody had ice cream on their mind, and yet here you suddenly were all jostling around the hatch. Apparently, you can hire an ice cream van , but that's hardly the point.

What came out of those pumps may not technically have been ice cream in the fastidious modern sense

What came out of those pumps may not technically have been ice cream in the fastidious modern sense. Did it contain egg, for example? I doubt it. Did it contain cream? No matter. It was kitten-soft and thrillingly cold, and whiter than any white seen in nature. It was whiter than white T-shirts washed in Fairy Snow. Heck, it was some kind of fairy snow.

Those looking to trade up had a 99, the standard cornet garnished with a Cadbury's Flake. Cadbury's started making the 99-sized short Flake as long ago as 1930, which is long enough for the origins of the ice-cream's name to have become a matter of dispute . Others went for a ribbon of red syrup, known as Dragon's Blood, spurted round the ice cream from a plastic squeezy-bottle. Some insatiable souls asked for both, and may be retiring about now on pensions of half a million a year.

In time, you realised that requesting a wrapped ice-lolly from the freezer was the sophisticated alternative to the runny cone, the more so since, in those pre-Cornetto days, the ice cream never reached fully to the bottom. That left you with a length of empty cornet to eat, or more likely chuck away. On the other hand, a soggy cone was even less appealing, while dripping is a problem that has taxed the finest minds .

I'm pleased to think that ice cream vans, like doorstep milk deliveries, have survived into the hypermarket era. If only they sold impeccably chilled half-bottles of Sauternes to accompany the 99s, this would truly be a world worth waking up in.

Comments

James

3 April 2009, 4:57PM
James

The art of eating the ice cream cone is once you've eaten half the ice cream you attack the bottom of the cone, so you're not left with that to eat dry at the end. Then it's a balancing act to eat the rest of the top without. An attack of the drips is always an interesting challenge - you just have to work fast to conquer this one.....

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Aedara

3 April 2009, 7:38PM
Aedara

The icecream man used to come to our street probably every week in summer or something like that and amazingly cones with strawberry sauce and possibly some sprinkles only cost 10p, you wouldn't get a flake on its own for that much these days (mind you that was only for kids, I don't know what he charged adults to make up for it. To solve the trouble of the icecream not going all the way down you just push some down the the cone with your tongue. I don't think my icecreams ever actually lasted long enough to drip too much.

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Babs

6 April 2009, 5:48PM
Babs

Yea, I also used to push the icecream down the cone with my tongue so it reached the bottom, but I also remember dripping icecream coming out of the bottom of the cone, but that's what made it such fun.

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Jools food

8 April 2009, 3:56PM
Jools food

Now I always had to snap the bottom inch of cone off, dip it in ice cream and share it with the family dog! Never mind Pavlov's bells, my hound responded to Greensleeves! Ah, happy days

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cheryl

10 April 2009, 2:29PM
cheryl

The sound of the 'icer' is like creepy jewellery box music off a scary film!! but the icecream is to die for!..cant wait for ours to start up again it's too windy and rainy here in orkney for it just now i guess!

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