Italian ice. Sno-Cones. Icees. Gelato. Popsicles. Plain old ice cream. Summer is the season for desserts that fall into the category of “cold substances with flavor.” But a mystery is the dessert sold as “frozen custard.” This name left me with a lot of questions. How do you freeze custard? Why would you want to?
Some of us in the Mid-Atlantic region first encountered frozen custard at Rita’s. Rita’s is a chain mostly famous for its Italian ices. Or, “water ices,” as the business’s Philadelphia founder might call them. In the TABLE office, the frozen custard discussion began with debates over Rita’s. Associate Online Editor Kylie Thomas orders a Swedish fish Italian ice with a twist of chocolate and vanilla frozen custard at Rita’s. Editor-in-chief Keith Recker came down hard that Rita’s is not “real frozen custard” but rather a melange of “whipped frozen Crisco and chalk.” Thus began a frozen custard quest.
The Frozen Custard Story
As it turns out, there is a legal definition of frozen custard. The Food & Drug Administration apparently says that for something to be frozen custard and not ice cream, it must contain 1.4% egg yolks by weight. A lot of ice cream does contain eggs, but the specific egg value is what makes the frozen custard, well, custard. (Editor-in-chief’s note: No chalk is supposed to be involved.)
Frozen custard has its origins on the Coney Island boardwalk. At the turn of the twentieth century, ice cream vendors Archie and Elton Kohr—like many of the best things in life, frozen custard is the invention of just two guys in Brooklyn wanting to make a buck—who thought that adding egg yolks to their ice cream created a smoother texture and would make it last longer in the heat.
It then spread to traveling carnivals across the country. That was where tennis player Ted Drewes encountered it and saw a business opportunity during the tennis off-season. (Because of course, it’s a natural progression from playing tennis to selling frozen custard, right?) Drewes brought it to his home city of St. Louis, Missouri, where it is the go-to treat of the summer. St. Louis is now one of the frozen custard centers of America, along with other urban centers across the Midwest. Perhaps the region’s prolific dairy farms have something to do with this.
The 1933 World’s Fair further popularized the dessert in Wisconsin and Missouri. For Midwesterners frozen custard is part of terroir of the heartland. Danny Meyer, founder of Shake Shack, frequented Ted Drewes chains before bringing custard to the his own beloved chain of restaurants. There are countless articles about sentimental attachment to summer nights in frozen custard stand parking lots in. Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri, Michigan and Illinois. What I initially thought was just a subvariety of ice cream has a deeper regional history for people who grew up around it.
A Frozen Custard Journey
From the Midwest, frozen custard made its way to our home of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. But to nationalize this question of just what frozen custard is and what makes it good, we enlisted Zack Durkin from our sales team. As a native of Rochester, NY, Zack grew up eating frozen custard at Abbott’s, a chain across western New York. He happened to be going to his hometown for the Fourth of July during our custard discussions, and he agreed to bring back pints of the Proustian ur-frozen-custard of his childhood.
Kylie and I went to Jerry’s Custard and Glen’s Frozen Custard, two independently owned custard and ice cream spots in Pittsburgh. Jerry’s had customers hanging out in the parking lot in the afternoon on a weekday. A very good sign. We ordered chocolate, vanilla, and one specialty flavor from each spot for consistency of flavor.
What we found was that one of the biggest indicators of custard quality is texture. Jerry’s had a creamy but not heavy texture that played across the palate in ways that Glen’s and Abbott’s did not. Editor-in-chief Keith remarked that it “just says ‘eat more of me.’” Evidence to support this inner voice: there also was only one almost-empty container of Jerry’s left in the freezer after our taste test. Our team ate entire pints of the vanilla and caramel flavors. The Glen’s, though our readers on Instagram cited it as their favorite, did not impress as much as we had hoped.
As we found in our condiment taste testing, there’s also a personal attachment to brands that transcends the actual taste and quality of the product. Director of Operations Star Laliberte loves Glen’s and would claim it as her ice cream of choice. But in the custard lineup, Jerry’s was what she liked best.
Our contender from Rochester, Abbott’s, had some of the strongest flavors. Of the chocolates, Abbott’s was the office favorite. The addition of eggs to chocolate ice cream really added dimension to a flavor I normally don’t like because of its richness. This was a surprise to me. The Abbott’s chocolate tasted like actual chocolate rather than frozen chocolate syrup.
Taste tests, as I’ve found in previous experiments with condiments and natural wine, challenge what we think about what we eat and drink. But it’s hard to argue with the deliciousness of frozen custard in summer. What is “real frozen custard”? It might just be the frozen custard that you, personally, remember and enjoy. Maybe that’s Rita’s. (Editor-in-chief’s note: It shouldn’t be.) Maybe that’s Jerry’s. More than the percentage of eggs in the frozen custard we tried, sharing it with friends was what made it memorable.
Story by Emma Riva / Photography by Dave Bryce
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