Ice cream has been served in Britain since the seventeenth century: it has graced the bowls of kings and the cones of the working man, and has been served plain, flavoured, moulded, sliced, squirted and scooped.

It has made the fortunes of industrialists and put bread on the table of generations of Italian émigrés. This new history of ice cream by food historian Ivan Day tells the whole story of ice cream in Britain, a story that has seen both its democratisation and a fall in the standards of its production and presentation. It is a story of fine cuisine, of entrepreneurship, and of food for fun.

Illustrated with archive material and photographs of historic ice cream desserts made from original recipes especially for this book, this is a remarkable tale of an extraordinary and much-loved food.