Ice creams and other frozen desserts fall into a nebulous category of foods: There are so many quality brands available that they’re rarely made at home. But in truth they are surprisingly simple to produce. If your first thought is that you need an expensive ice cream machine, think again. You don’t even need an old fashioned hand-cranked one. Homemade ice cream can be made simply in your home freezer and mixed by hand or with a common electric mixer. Indeed, this has always been the case—in Fannie Merritt Farmer’s 1896 cookbook, The Boston Cooking School Cookbook, she gives a recipe for vanilla ice cream that contains only three ingredients: cream, sugar, and vanilla. The directions are somewhat vague but succinct: “mix ingredients, and freeze.”

Plum sorbet - recipe below.

The lightness of ice cream comes from its being aerated, or whipped; Ms. Farmer’s recipe, although tasty, would no doubt be on the heavy side. The simple steps for homemade ice cream are these: Make your base, transfer it to a bowl, place the bowl in the freezer, stir it periodically as it freezes, and aerate it with an electric mixer.

It’s as simple as that. Ice cream is, after all, a very old delicacy, made long before electricity and even commercial ice production. There are a few theories on its origin. One is that it’s related to methods the Chinese used for thousands of years to preserve fruits and juices. Another is that it stems from a treat that the famed Roman Emperor Nero is said to have enjoyed: mountain snow drizzled with honey. Whatever the origin, one can only imagine the luxury (and status) it must have represented prior to modern refrigeration.

Indeed, ice cream was originally a food for the wealthy. Early recipes contained no dairy and were based on frozen fruit syrups. (The French word sorbet, the Italian sorbetto, and the English sherbet are all said to be derived from the Turkish chorbet, or possibly the Arabic charbab, which generally refers to syrup-based fruit drinks.) The addition of cream and eggs was supposedly added not only to make the delicacy even more decadent but also to make it whiter and seemingly more exclusive.

The marrying of ice cream with an edible cone was something of necessity, not to mention a stroke of genius. It happened at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. Apparently, as fate would have it, a Syrian immigrant was selling waffles next to an ice cream vendor; business was bustling and the ice cream man ran short of clean dishes. The wafflemaker saw an opportunity and fashioned his waffles into the shape of cones.

According to the International Dairy Foods Association, more ice cream is sold on Sunday than any other day of the week.

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan designated July as National Ice Cream Month, and the third Sunday of the month as National Ice Cream Day. (He must have really liked the stuff.) In his proclamation the former president also called for his fellow Americans to observe these events with “appropriate ceremonies and activities.” I’m still trying to figure out what he meant by that.

—joe george