Though ice cream may seem a relatively modern treat, people have actually been eating it in some form for about 3,000 years. Originally, it was composed of snow or ice, flavored with tastes popular with the Roman nobility in the 4th century B.C. In fact, we know the emperor Nero imported snow from the mountains and topped it with fruit juices and honey to make it sweeter.

China is reported to have recipes that could make both water and milk ices, and it is said that the explorer, Marco Polo, brought them back to Europe during the 13th century.

In the American colonies, people poured maple syrup over snow and let it harden, and both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned a "cream machine for making ice." First Lady Dolly Madison's White House dinner parties were talked about for the "large shining dome of pink ice cream" as the centerpiece. And from the early 1700s, ordinary colonists talked about going to ice cream houses - they weren't generally called ice cream parlors or ice cream stands until the late 1870s.

The discovery that salt lowered the freezing point of cracked ice led to the first practical method of making ice cream, which also included a wooden bucket freezer with rotary paddles. In 1846, Nancy Johnson, a Philadelphia dairy maid, invented the hand-cranked ice cream freezer, and, by 1851, the first wholesale ice cream was manufactured in Baltimore, Maryland.

With the development of mechanical refrigeration, widespread distribution of ice cream became possible. After the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, people started asking for ice cream cones, invented at the fair when an ice cream vendor ran out of dishes and a nearby pastry vendor turned his baked creations into a twisted cone to hold the treat.

Two premier makers of ice cream, Haagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry's began manufacturing in 1959 and 1978, respectively.