ice cream, the frozen mixture of sweetened and flavored cream or milk that is so universal today, was a precious indulgence when “One plate of Ice cream” was served at the table of King Charles II in 1671, according to Elias Ashmole’s account in The Institution, Laws and Ceremonies of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, published a year later. At the time, kings, queens, and nobles might dine on ice cream. Commoners did not. Until the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century, the expense and difficulty of making ice cream limited it to upper-class tables.
