Post-Colonial Custard

THE CO-AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE ALSO DRAFTED A RADICAL RECIPE

THE FOUNDERS shared a love of ice cream, but none was more devoted than Thomas Jefferson. In 1789 he returned from France with his chef—newly trained in making frozen desserts—and a resolve to keep enjoying it. In Philadelphia in 1791, he sent to France for 50 vanilla bean pods, which, he later wrote, are “much used in seasoning ice creams.” He built an ice house at Monticello in 1802. And at Jefferson’s White House that year, Senator Samuel Latham Mitchill recalled eating ice cream in warm pastry—“a curious contrast, as if the ice had just been taken from the oven.”