Creating and composing ice cream in the transition from 18th to 19th century. Cultures of knowledge and gustatory pleasure between courts and middle-class housholds.

• Applicant: Dr. Heiner Stahl
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 502162539

The research project examines the production, preparation, presentation and the pleasure of ice cream between 1750 and 1850. It enquires transfers of knowledge and practices of distinction, that are inscribed in the creation, the staging and the joyful consumption of this dessert. The study comprises five different threads that refer to ice cream as a means of social, cultural, manual and sensory distinction. Firstly, the project reflects on the modes of distinction in the eating culture of transregional european baronial aristocracy and examines the modes of adoption and appropriation in middle-class dining and table culture. Secondly, the proposal outlines the artistic knowledge of cooks and confectioners regarding frozen dessert and ice cream and the ways these experts are securing, sharing and propagating this knowledge transregionally and transnationally. The third thread of the project looks into the evolving civic reading and media society when examining the publishing process of cookbooks and receipt collections, its distribution, reception and the popularization of knowledge related to eating dessert. This connects to gustatory knowledge and sensory experience as Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1825) has outlined with additional empirical data derived from inventories, menu lists and registers of consumption that have been compiled by clerks of courtly kitchens and its pastry workshops and from autobiographical accounts and personal letters of aristocratic and middle-class gourmands and gourmandes. The fifth core of research is the materiality and texture of ice cream shifting over time from frozen to melted condition. At this point material culture touches sensory history.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants