What Is It Like To Eat Ice Cream For The Very First Time? [Long Shorts]

The glass was a lot smaller/shallower than that and was known as a 'Penny Lick', they still come up for auction now and again. Eventually banned in 1898 due to health concerns.

I love this so much! It's actually so humanising to see how people in the past were still trying to figure random little things like this out

I love this kind of history, everyone knows about the big stuff done by famous and ‘important’ people, but we don’t hear enough about working class people and their lives!

This happened to my mother who came here as an immigrant from a mudbrick house with no electricity or running water. Brainfreeze, followed by slow dawning joy.

1960s Manchester, pre- home deep freeze era, we used to take our own bowl out to the ice cream man and he'd put the relevant number of scoops in it. It would sit in the tiny, useless freezer compartment of the fridge until tea time, when it would be eaten with tinned peaches. Not so far removed from the penny lick really

This is your funniest long short yet.

People used to share dishes a lot. IIRC, for communion the entire congregation used to drink out of the same cup of blessed wine. In general people only scrubbed dishes to remove visible residue, and they didn't use soap. So things like mugs and flatware wouldn't be washed by our standards either. That included public eating places like inns and taverns as well as wealthy houses that had guests, like royal palaces.

You always find these tidbits of fun information nobody else thinks about! Brilliant!

I cannot look at ice cream the same way but it does remind me of first time drivers yelling 'woah!' at new vehicles 😅

I remember when I gave someone ice cream for the very first time. It was in Agadir in Morocco. We were at a restaurant, and were having ice cream for dessert. And there was a small kitten there who was meowing to get some food. So I scooped out a little bit of ice cream and dropped on the floor for him to eat. He first stuck his nose into it, to try to find out what it was. But because of the cold, he probably thought he had been bitten or something. So he jumped back, and then tried to hit the ice cream with his paw, probably in an attempt to kill it or something. It was quite cute to watch. And yes, he did eat it at the end.

Thank you for the demonstration at the end in case i wasn't sure how much I hated this😂

BRILLIANT and lots of fun. I actually laughed out loud at the end. Thank you so much for this bit of truthful fun history knowledge. Love you for these! xxx

London had a huge demand for ice so it was imported from Norway and other places, even the United States. It was stored in huge underground ice-wells and sold in blocks to anyone who need refrigeration.

For some reason I have always thought of London as being the testing ground for everything. "Give it to a Londoner, they'll do anything," Hmmm, this just reinforces my view. 😂

The penny lick was a lot smaller than your cup, of course, more like a shot glass with a single pingpong-ball size scoop inside

Omigosh, how did ice cream ever beat those odds? 🤣 But I am glad it did. Brilliant piece by the way.

I remember as a child being told the possibly apocryphal story about how hot dogs (frankfurters or wieners) were introduced to America without buns. At some big fair or exhibition (it varies) the sausage vendor the loaned customers white gloves to protect their fingers from the hot sausages. Problem is they wanted to keep the gloves and so wandered off with them. The story says vendor then strikes upon the happy solution of serving them in a bun and thus the hot dog is born. This raises so many questions about the gloves (or sometimes mittens). White cotton? Were they ever washed? How many pairs would they start the day with? Would customers get a pair or just one? Were they really big so they fit all customers? If the day’s supply of gloves were all stolen, would they shut down for the day? Wouldn’t a piece of thick paper have worked as well?

love how much you reveled the yukiñess of the practice. The knowledge wasn't a surprise to me, though. Thanks for making me smile.

Henry Mayhew and Charles Dickens both get more than honourable mentions in Terry Pratchett's book Dodger. I'd never heard about Mayhew till I read it. Mayhew is an interesting bloke, worth knowing about.

You are absolutely hilarious and so informative! Thank you loveliness 😂