Where I grew up in Oklahoma, we didn’t get much snow — I never saw a white Christmas until I was much older and had moved out of the area. On the rare occasions when we did get snow, my mother always made snow ice cream. I don’t think people were so obsessed with germs back then, and she just scooped the snow off the ground.
I remember it being really good and very special because we only got it when it snowed, and that rarely happened.
I have no idea when people started making ice cream using snow, but apparently they’ve been doing it for a long, long time. The Chinese, Iraqis and Persians have tinkered with various combinations of snow, ice and sweeteners for thousands of years. In the 17th century, members of the Neapolitan aristocracy sent their servants into the Alps with large chests to collect snow, that was then soaked in wine and decorated with fruit and fennel. Native Americans sweetened snow with maple sugar. Canadians have long poured hot maple syrup onto snow to create sticky maple toffee.
As I indicated earlier, we didn’t seem to worry so much about germs when I was growing up — I recently read that the EPA says snow could pick up particles that are byproducts of the combustion fossil fuels from vehicles on its way to Earth. And some health officials are concerned because of what the snow might pick up on the ground. Their argument is that you wouldn’t drink from a water puddle on the sidewalk, so why would you eat snow from the same source?
One school of thought is that snow gets cleaner the longer it snows — that the first few inches of falling snow capture most of the pollutants in the air. I guess if it’s a major snowstorm and it keeps a lot of the vehicles off the road, there would also be lower emissions to pollute the air and snow.
So I guess the conclusion is that the deeper the snow, the better for making snow ice cream. Of course, we live less than 2 miles from the Dairy Queen…..
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