The Queen of Ices

Appears in
Pride and Pudding: The History of British Puddings, Savoury and Sweet
Pride and Pudding

By Regula Ysewijn

Published 2016

  • About

Agnes Bertha Marshall, crowned with the title ‘Queen of Ices’ by ice-cream afficionados today, was an English culinary entrepreneur. She published two books entirely devoted to ices: a thin blue volume named The Book of Ices (1888) and her later book Fancy Ices (1894). They remain much sought after books to this day.

She also invented an ‘ice cave’ to keep ices cold and an ice-cream machine capable of freezing a pint of ice-cream mixture in five minutes, for which she was granted a patent. Her inventions would further develop ice-cream making in England. She quite remarkably suggests using liquid oxygen to freeze ice cream, which was quite modern for the day.