Alan Davidson

Ice Cream Soda

Appears in
Oxford Companion to Food
Oxford Companion to Food

By Alan Davidson

Published 2014

  • About

ice cream soda ‘made with milk, a flavored syrup, and a scoop of ice cream’, is recorded by Mariani (1994) as making its first appearance at Philadelphia in 1874. Its importance became such that it was responsible for the name ‘ice cream soda fountain’, applied to an establishment where the whole range of ice creams and derived preparations could be had.

Mariani remarks that the small town soda fountain survived the Depression years better than the more opulent pharmacy fountains, and that in the 1940s ‘Hollywood movies pictured ice cream soda fountains as oases of innocent Americana’. They were then trysting places of choice for teenagers. Decades later, such fountains are rare, except as nostalgic re-creations.