See V. Cobb, The Scoop on Ice Cream (1985); W. S. Arbuckle, Ice Cream (1986).
Frozen dairy food. Ice cream is made from cream or butterfat, milk, sugar, and flavourings. Fruit ices (nondairy frozen desserts) were introduced into Europe from the East sometime after being first described by Marco Polo in his journals. Creation of the first true cream ice is credited to a Parisian café owner named Tortoni in the late 18th century. The ice-cream cone originated at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, Mo., U.S. Commercial ice cream is made by heating and blending its ingredients to form a mix, which is then pasteurized and homogenized. The mix is ripened for several hours and then agitated while being frozen to incorporate air; the highest-quality ice creams incorporate the least air. Ice cream is now available in hundreds, if not thousands, of flavours.
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Edible seed of a large South American tree, Bertholletia excelsa (family Lecythidaceae), and one of the major commercially traded nuts in the world. The hard-walled fruit, resembling a large coconut, contains 8–24 nuts (seeds) arranged in it like sections of an orange. Each nut has a very hard shell and is three-sided in shape. Brazil nuts are high in fat and protein and taste somewhat like almond or coconut. The tree grows wild in stands in the Amazon River basin, reaching heights of 150 ft (45 m) or more.
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Yellowish part of milk, rich in butterfat, that rises to the surface naturally if milk is allowed to stand. In the dairy industry, cream is separated mechanically. Cream is graded by percentage of fat content. In the U.S., half-and-half, a mixture of milk and cream, contains 10.5–18percnt butterfat; light cream, commonly served with coffee, contains no less than 18percnt; and medium and heavy creams (the latter including whipping cream) contain about 30percnt and 36percnt respectively. Commercial sour cream, about 18–20percnt butterfat, is inoculated with lactic-acid-producing bacteria. Seealso ice cream.
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