Servers, Ice Cream

servers, ice cream, constitute an entire category of serving utensils. Despite the fact that food chilled by ice existed in ancient Rome, and that forms of ices and ice cream became fashionable in elite European circles in the seventeenth century, the development of utensils specific to its serving is primarily an American story. See ice cream. European serving methods in the pre-mechanized eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries included elegant porcelain serving pails with matching or glass cups that would have needed little more than a serving spoon or even a tablespoon to serve the ice cream. A simple, small teaspoon could have scooped the ice cream out of a cup. Spoon-like implements with straight edges—ice cream spades—exist from the eighteenth century.