"A lot of things are being sold as smoothies today, but generally, they're loaded with fresh fruit, nonfat frozen yogurt, vitamins, minerals, fibers, active cultures, immune-system boosters and sometimes protein powder. And they can be blended to order in less than a minute. Actually, smoothies have been around since the early 1970s. They were created on the West Coast as a refreshment at health clubs and juice bars. If you've ever had an Orange Julius, you've had a smoothie."

---"Smooth shakes," Alan J. Wax, Newsday (New York, NY), July 29, 1998 (p.B14)

About Orange Julius & Smoothie King.

If you are researching the smoothie industry for business class, ask your librarian how to access consumer & trade magazine databases such as EBSCO's MasterFile, Business Source, ProQuest's Research II, Gale's Business and Company Resource and DIALOG's Business & Industry. Here you will find articles on companies, market data, consumer trends and pricing strategy. Ask your librarian about access...many of these databases may be available to you from your own home computer. All you need is a library card! The Juice and Smoothie Association may also be useful.

Related foods? Lemonade & milk shakes.

Switchel

"Switchel. [Origin unknown. A name for various intoxicating drinks.] A drink of molasses and water, often seasoned with vinegar and ginger, and sometimes with rum." 1790. Freneau, Poems (1795) 375 "For such attempts men drink your high-proof wines. Not spiritless switchel and vile hogo drams."...1946. Yankee August 9 "Our grandfathers would be drinking Switchel for refreshment: a mixture of water, ginger, molasses or vinegar, and sometimes rum."

---A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles, Mitford M. Mathews editor [University of Chicago Press:Chicago] 1951 (p. 1695)

"Switchel. A Colonial drink made from molasses, vinegar, and water. It is sometimes called "haymaker's punch." Brandy, cider, or rum was often added."

---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 320)



"As the time for harvesting the New England hay crops draws near, old-times are likely to sigh for the earlier days when every farmer was expected to "do the honors" to the men he employed to work in the hayfields. These consisted of sumptuous meals and plenty of switchel. Possibly this cooling, delectable drink is known in fields afar today, but it was originally a New England beverage, seldom manufactured or served except during haying. It was a concoction of molasses, sugar, vinegar and water, and many good farm wives had their own secret formulas. Some simply stirred until well blended, added ice if it were available and served. Others cooked the mixture and allowed it to cool naturally. Generally switchel was carried to the hayfields in one or two gallon stone jugs, wrapped in wet cloths and placed somewhere in the sahd. By keeping the cloth wet the mixture would remain cool for hours. While switchel was originally devised as a strictly non-alcoholic, and peculiarly cooling, drink, some farmers who believed their men cut more hay when warm than when cool more or less liberally fortified the contents of the jug with New England rum; which was cheap; pure and plentiful. Such employers had little difficulty in obtaining plenty of hands during haying time."

---"Harvesting in Old New England Made Gay by Serving Switchel," New York Times, June 16, 1929 (p. XX2)

"Many of the large New England hayfields have disappeared; so has the switchel, which is now merely a name. Switchel was a mixture of molasses, ginger, water and a dash of vinegar, contained in a brown jug cached under the shade of a bunch of alders or partly submerged in a spring hole. On a hot day when men were mowing, raking, or pitching hay, frequent trips were made to the switchel jug. Dusty throats needed something to wash away the hayseed, and switchel was the answer. It was consumed in quantities. The coldness of the water was tempered by the molasses, while the ginger and vinegar prevented cramps."

---"A Forgotten Drink," New York Times, May 24, 1931 (p. SM9)

How to make Switchel?

[1855]

"'Harvest Drink. Mix with five gallons of good water, half a gallon of molasses, one quart of vinegar, and two ounces of powdered ginger. This will make not only a very pleasant beverage, but one highly invigorating and healthful.'---From Practical American Cookery and Domestic Economy, by Miss Hall, 1855, page 117....Swanky was a seagoing switchel...Similar in purpose to modern sports drinks, it slakes thirst and provdes a bit of sugary energy. Molasses is high in minerals as well. This recipe yields close to six gallons, which would be about right for a crew of people haying in summer months or a schooner full of handliners. The proportions for roughly a quart and a half are as follows: five cups water, half a cup of molasses, a quarter cup of vinegar, and three teaspoons of ginger. One of our testers remarked that the swanky 'tastes like something that's good for you.' You may want to sample it after mixing and add additional water to taste. We liked it best when the water had been doubled."

---Saltwater Foodways: New Englanders and their food, at sea and ashore, in the nineteeth century, Sandra L. Oliver [Mystic Seaport Museum:Mystic CT] 1995(p. 146-147)

[1857]

"Harvest Drink. Mix with five gallons of good water, half a gallon of molasses, one quart of vinegar, and two ounces of powdered ginger. This will make not only a very pleasant beverage, but one highly invigorating and healthful."

---Practical American Cookery and Domestic Economy, Elizabeth M. Hall [Miller, ORton & Co:New York] 1857 (p. 342)

[1869]

Harvest Beer, Domestic Cookery/Lea

[1877]

Grandmother's Harvest Drink , Buckeye Cookery/Wilcox

Related beverages? cordials, shrub & punch.

Tang

[1957]

"A new instant, orange-flavored breakfast beverage, Tang, will be introduced next month in selected test markets by the Post division of the General Foods Corporation."

---"Advertising: 'Meeting-in-Round'," New York Times, August 7, 1957 (p. 55)

"General Foods Corp.'s Post division will introduce in selected test markets this September a new instant orange-flavored breakfast beverage called Tang. It is a powder which can be mixed instantly in cold water. Each serving, according to General Foods, contains more vitamins C and A than equivalent amounts of fresh or frozen orange juice. It is packed in seven and 14-ounce jars; the seven-ounce jar makes 12 individual four-ounce servings."

---"General Goods Offers New Drink," Wall Street Journal, August 7, 1957 (p. 24)

[1958]

"A brand new product in the morning beverage field made its Washington debut at a brunch Tuesday at the Mayflower Hotel. The new instant breakfast drink, called 'Tang,' is a product of General Foods Corporation. "It contains more vitamins A and C than fresh or frozen orange juice, thereby setting off the first spark toward a brand new feeling each morning.," Fay Burnett, nutritionist for General Foods Kitchens, told newspaper, radio, TV and other guests at the Brunch. Vitamin-enriched Tang has a sunny fresh flavor and an appetizing orange color...Miss Wooden showed how Tang is made in seconds by merely mixing two rounded teaspoons of the powdered breakfast drink in a glass of cold water. It can be make as needed--by the glass, quart or more...When it is made up ahead of time, it should be stored in the refrigerator, the colder, the better flavor...And there's not separation. After Tang is mixed with water, ti stays in solution...'Tang' will be available in local markets by the first week in September."

---"New Breakfast Drink: In Vitamins A & C It Packs a Punch," Washington Post and Times Herald, August 28, 1958 (p. C14)

[1961]

"Tang, the orange flavored vitamin enriched breakfast drink which has been on the market for some time, has been joined by a new companion on the grocery shelves. It is Instant Tang Grapefruit Flavored Breakfast Drink, a start-sweet concoction with a true fruit taste. Like its predecessor, the new Tang comes in 7 ounce jars in powder form, to be mixed with water [be sure the water is ice cold for the best flavor] either a glass at a time or in a decanter."

---"'Round the Food Stores: For a Look at the Latest Ideas," Lois Baker, Chicago Daily Tribune, December 29, 1961 (p. B2)

[1962]

"Amazing but true: The richest orange flavor is not in the juice, not in the pulp, but locked in the rind of tree-ripened oranges. And that's where TANG gets is new natural flavor. It's the best tasting TANG that ever happened...So, for breakfast tomorrow, mix a decanterful of New natural Orange Flavor TANG tonight...By the way, better try New natural Grapefurit Flavor TANG too."

---display ad, Chicago Daily Tribune, September 23, 1962 (p. C 32)

[1969]

"'Because of the limitations of space, only the most vital earth elements can be taken aboard.' That's not the national Aeronautics and Space Administration talking. It's General Foods Corp. It claims Tang is one of the those 'vital earth elements.'...Just how 'vital' such items are to the moon effort might be open to discussion. But they're suddenly vital to the men of Madison Avenue. A lot of companies hope to make a lot of mileage out of the fact that some everyday products will be going along on the trip [Apollo 11]...There's hardly a company not trying to make some hay out of its connection with the Apollo program. And some of the advertising tie-ins are not being received enthusiastically by NASA..."We don't encourage it. But we don't discourage it as long as the ads are factual."...According to Sandra Meyer, senior product manager for Tang, a musical advertisement extolling the drink's virtues has been prepared for quick substitution for the Apollo-related TV spots if anything goes wrong on Apollo 11. And grocery stores selling Tang have been cautioned not to use store promotions until it's clear the mission is successful. General Foods' newspaper ad show a moon superimposed on an all-black background. In the lower right hand corner a coupon reads: 'For earth people only: 12 cents off Tang." (Tang is also one-quarter sponsor of the American Broadcasting Co.'s space coverage this week at a cost of $500,000.)... And while General Foods is saying a lot about its orange flavored Tang, it's saying a lot less about the fact the astronauts will also have the choice of grapefruit, pineapple-grapefruit and grape flavored versions of the drink. The company test-marketed some of these flavors with ordinary customers and decided they wouldn't sell."

---"NASA Uneasy: Madison Avenue Capitalizing on Apollo Products," Robert E. Dallos, Los Angeles Times, July 17, 1969 (p. A1)

"Tang Instant Breakfast Drink has gone along with our astronauts since the Gemini flights of 1965...General Foods is quick to point out that it was not it that approached Aeronautics and Space Administration by the other way around, and that 'there are no contacts of payments involved.' Tang just met the space food requirements, that's all."

---"Advertising: Madison Ave. Takes a Trip to the Moon," Philip H. Dougherty, New York Times, June 29, 1969 (p. F16)

NASA recap

"For the record, the drink's origin had nothing to do with the space program. It was developed by General Foods in 1957, 12 years before man would set foot on the lunar surface. But the Vitamin C-filled drink is indelibly tied with outer space, largely because it has been used by astronauts since the Gemini flights of 1965 - and because of advertising. "Tang Takes Off" bleats a 1965 General Foods newsletter that describes the elaborate efforts to craft commercials tied to the Gemini flights. Later commercials and ad promotions - from moon maps sent to thousands of schools to lunar module replicas on 18-ounce Tang jars - would reinforce the Tang-Space connection for years. Once widely popular, Tang is no longer the major player it once was. "Its sales are not now what they were then," said Nancy Redmond, a spokeswoman for Kraft General Foods. She attributed that mainly to changes in consumer tastes and the availability of other drinks. Still, Redmond said, "Tang has its dedicated users." It's also now available in mango flavor and sugar-free orange. Plastic containers have replaced the old glass jars. And Tang is still used regularly in space. "

---"Space-Tang Continuum; One Giant Leap," News & Record (Greensboro, NC), July 20, 1994 (p. D1)

Tang wasn't the only American product to capitalize on the space program. Remember Space Food Sticks? Tang's inventor also created Pop Rocks.

Tequila

Why the worm?

"The agave plant contains a sweet sap at its heart called aquamiel ('honey water') that is made into a brandy called vino mezcal, which is tequila...Tax records of the town of Tequila show that Don Cenobio Sauzia shipped barrels of 'mezcal wine' to the U.S. in 1873, and American troops brought it back from their campaign against Pancho Villa in 1916. During a gin shortage in 1944 in this country tequila enjoyed a brief popularity, but it was not until the 1960s, when it became a faddish drink among California university students, that the sales of the spirit really grew, especially as the basis for the Margarita cocktail...The 'classic' way...to drink straight tequila, which required dried crushed worms from the agave plant in a shake of salt, was described by Green Peyton in his book San Antonio: City in the Sun (1946)."

---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 325)

Pulque & mescal

"All distilled maguey juices are mescals, a word derived from mexcalmetl, a Nauhuatl word for the agave plant...Much mescal is produced locally in the old-fashioned way. Mague pinas are placed in pits, covered with heated rocks and layers of fiber matting, and then allowed to cook for several days. The process gives mescal its distinctive smoky, earthy flavor. Once cooked, the mague is placed in wooden barrels and allowed to ferment for up to a month. The resultant mixture of fiber and liquid is distilled twice...Like tequila, mescal is classified as aged or not...Probably the best known outside Mexico is mescal con gusano, sold with a 'worm' in the bottle. The 'worm' is really a larva of a moth that lives in the base of the maguey plant."



---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor [Oxford University Press:New York] 2004, Volume 2 (p. 537) "If food was hedged about with prohibition, fermented liquor was even more so. There was, of course, no distilled liquor unti the arrival of the Europeans, but there were many kinds of fermented drinks. Alcoholic liquids could be made from maize, honey, pineapples, cactus fruits, and many other things. The most important, which we have encountered in the Aztec version of the Aztec banquet, was pulque, a name of Antillean origin that replaces the Nahuatl uctli. It was made from certain species of the Agave, or century plant, or maguey, a spicy rosette-forming plant which is not a cactus, belonging to the Agavacae family. When, after years of growth, the maguey is about to shoot up a flowering stalk, the bud is cut out and the plant produces great quantities of sweet juice for about two months. This juice, today called aguamiel, or honeywater, can be drunk as is, boiled down to make syrup, boiled down more to make sugar, or fermented into pilque or vinegar. Pulque could be flavored with many roots and fruit, but the simple version is a whitish liquid with a peculiar but not unpleasant taste. Some of the additives were reputed to make it much stronger, but without them pulque contained only a few percents of alcohol. There are different stories as to who was permitted to drink pulque. Cooper-Clark says that it was old men and women over seventy who had children and grandchildren...Motolinia said it was permissible for those over fifty, because that was when the blood turned cold, and pulque warmed it and made it easier to sleep...In any case, only a few small cups were allowed. At weddings and certain religious festivals the young were given pulque; one feast was even called "when the children drink pulque," but it was always in strictly limited quantities. Drinking was acceptable, intoxication was not. Pulque drinking must have been thought of as plebian, because Motolinia says lords, princes, and warriors made it ia point of honor not to drink it, preferring to drink chocolate, which was the prestige drink."

---America's First Cuisines, Sophie D. Coe [University of Texas Pres:Austin] 1994 (p. 84-85) Margaritas

While no one questions the fact that taquila is a Mexican product, there are conflicting stories regarding the origin of the drink called Margarita: "The margarita, a cocktail made of tequila, triple sec, or Cointreau, and lime juice served in a salt-rimmed glass, was popularized by Victor J. Bergeron in his chain of Senor Pico restaurants in California during the 1960s...While Bergeron popularized the margarita, he did not invent it. Several different origin stories for margaritas have circulated. According to Marion Gorman and Felipe de Alba's The Tequila Book, one story traces the margarita to the bar at the Caliente Race Track in Tijuana, Mexico about 1930. Another credits Dona Bertha, owner of Bertha's Bar in Taxco, Mexico, with the invention of a drink that later evolved into the margarita. The former Los Angeles bartender Daniel Negrete claims to have originated the cocktail in 1936 at the Garci Crespo Hotel in Puebla, Mexico...Whatever its origins, the margarita cocktail quickly spread throughout America during the 1960s. It became a staple of Mexican restaurants in the United States. In Mexico, restaurants that attracted the American tourist trade adopted margaritas. From the original margarita, Anglo tastes encouraged adaptations."

---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor [Oxford University Press:New York] 2004, Volume 2 (p. 46-7) "Margarita...there are several claims as the creation of the drink. One story traces the margarita to the bar at the Caliente Race Track in Tijuana, Mexico, about 1930. Another credits Dona Bertha, owner of Bertita's bar in Tasca, Mexico, as having made the drink about 1930. Former Los Angeles bartender Daniel Negrete claims to have originated the cocktail at the Farci Crespo Hotel in Puebla, Mexico, in 1936 and named it after a girlfriend named Margarita. Still another story gives the credit to a San Antonio, Texas, woman, Margarita Sames, who made the drink for houseguests in 1948 while living in Acapulco. Yet another claim pinpoints the drink's birthplace as the Tale of the Cock Restaurant in Los Angeles about 1955 and says it was named after a Hollywood starlet."

---Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, John F. Mariani [Lebhar-Friedman:New York] 1999 (p. 199)

[1968]

"Margarita Cocktail

Juice of 1/2 lime

1/2 ounce Triple Sec

1 ounce Tequila

Shake and strain into a chilled champagne glass which has been edged with salt. To do this, rub the rim of the glass with a piece of lime, then dip the rim into a saucer of salt. The Mexicans call their champagne glasses champaneros. We bought some amber-colored ones in Mexico-Mexican bubble glass. It was fun for a while serving cocktails in these glasses, which came in all sizes and heights and sometimes a little lopsided--no two are ever alike--but it was so much trouble to import them and they broke at such a fantastic rate that we finally had to have them made for us in this country. I still think the Mexican glass has more charm\ but they just aren't practical for restaurant use."

---Trader Vic's Pacific Isand Cookbook, Victor Bergeron [Doubleday & Company:Garden City NY] 1968 (p. 185) Recommended reading: The Tequila Book/Marion Gorman Tomato juice

Andrew F. Smith, one of America's most respected and prolific food historians, launched his career studying/reporting on tomatoes. His first book: The Tomato in America [1994] is the cornerstone for all things tomato. Mr. Smith carefully/academically chronicles the introduction, recipe embracements, medicinal applications, social challenges and commercial successes of tomatoes in our country. Presumably, tomato juice descended from 19th century tomato pills & tomato syrup. These "modern" health preparations were prescribed for everyone from infants to infirmed requiring a serious infusion of vitamins. Decades before lycopine was discovered, medical professionals and housewives acknowledged the power of the tomato.

"The Campbell Soup Company's first major diversification was in tomato juice. The drinking of tomato juice was a mid-twentieth-century phenomenon. According to several accounts, tomato juice was the creation of the American-born French Chef Louis Perrin. In 1917 he experimentally served tomato juice to his guests at a resort in French Lick Springs, Indiana. Chicago businessmen who spent their vacations at French Lick Springs purportedly spread the word to others about the 'tomato juice cocktail in lieu of stronger mixtures.' Although canned tomato cocktails were growing more popular by the 1920s, none of the existing products yielded juice with just the right color and flavor. Tomato juice cocktails were heralded during a Tri-State Packers Convention at Philadelphia;s Adlephia Hotel in 1922. A can manufacturer served tomato juice free of charge to each participant in the annual banquet in hopes that canners would pack tomato juice. By this date, tomato juice was touted as a health drink and was served in hospitals. According to Dr. Hugo Friedstein of Chicago's Children's Memorial Hospital, the vitamin content of tomato juice did 'marvelous things in cleansinhg the system.' Yet it was not canned commercially. The reason for the failure of canned tomato juice as that tomato solids settled atthe bottom of the can, or the class the juice as poured into. In 1924 an Indianapolis pediatrician discussed this problem with his friend Ralph Kemp of Frankfort, Indiana. Kemp had majored in agricultural engineering at the University of Wisconsin and at the time worked with his father, John Kemp, operating a canning plant. Intrigued with the challenge, the Kemps began experimenting to find a way to break tomato pulp into minute particles that would float in the juice. Their solution was to use a viscolizer previously employed in the manufacture of ice cream. It required a great deal of adaption to be used successsfully canning tomato juice. After four years of work, the Kemps finally succeeded. In 1928 they applied for a patent and initiated the first national advertising campaign for their tomato juice. Tomato juice was an instant hit with the American public. The Campbell Soup Company moved itno high gear to produce its own tomato juice. Campbell converted part of Camden's Plant No. 2, built during the 1920s, for makin tomato soup. The problem now became what tomato variety should be grown for making juice. After experimentation, a tomato was found that met the needs. Campbell released its version of tomato juice in 1931. In 1932 Campbell launched a major marketing drive for its tomato juice, and by 1935 30 percent of Campbell tomatoes went into making that product. By the following year, cookbooks included recipes using Campbell's tomato juice as an ingredient. Another reason tomato juice was so succesful was the end of Prohibition. A cocktail made of tomato juice and vodka was probably first developed at Harry's Bar in Paris by Ferdinand 'Pete" Petiot. Petiot moved to New York in 1933 and introduced his new creation. After experimentation, he added Worcestershire sauce and called it a Bloody Mary. Its name was supposedly derived from the British Queen Mary I, who killed many Protestants during her reign in the mid-sixteenth century, Others claim that Mary was Petiot's girlfriend...Tomato juice was a natural addition to the Campbell Soup Company, which had been built on the tomato. Its introduction, however, reversed the corporate decision to focus soley on soupmaking. The implications of this trend would not be felt for decades. Shortly after World War II ended, Campbell Soup Company made another logical addition when it purchased V8 juice from Standard Brands."

---Souper Tomatoes: The Story of America's Favorite Food, Andrew F. Smith [Rutgers University Press:New Brunswick NJ] 2000 (p. 92-93)

[1913]

"Tomato Juice Valuable. Tomato juice will remove ink stains from linen."

---Chicago Defender, October 25, 1913 (p. 3)

[1922]

"The first thing you should know about tomatoes is that when oranges are very expensive and the baby must have orange juice, that very often the physician will let you use tomato juice instead."

---"Tomatoes Rich in Vitamines," Los Angeles Times, September 30, 1922 (p. I16).

Michigan State University's Feeding America historical cookbooks offers 13 pre-1922 recipes using Tomato Juice.

[1928 & 1953]

"Twenty-five years ago this month, canned tomato juice was introduced to consumers. It appeared after four years of proccessing research by the kemp Brothers Packing Comapny of Frankfort, Ind., which had in mind the development of a new baby food. But the infants turned out to be a minor market as compared with the appeal 'liquid tomato' had on the general trade in groceries and on restaurants. From the pack of about 1,5000,000 cases in 1930, tomato juice has swelled to an output that this year is expected to toatl 28,500,000 cases. The United States Department of Agriculture found a few years ago that this juice was purchased more often than any other canned single-strength juice. About 44 per cent of the famlies in the United States bought it. The success story of this product stems not only form its attractive tang and tint, but also from the fact that canned tomato juice is both cheap and high in nutrients. At a current cost of 29 cnets for a forty-six ounce can, the juice costs about 2 1/2 cents for a half-cup serving. This quantity supplies aobut a fourth of the Vitamin A and C needs of the physically active amn....Largely consumed exclusively in this country (a little is exported to Cuba and Canada), tomat juice is primarily a berverage. But, on occasion, it supplies the liquid for an aspic, is heated to provide a bracing hot soup...and takes the place of other liquids in cheese soufles, main dish dumplings and meat stews."

---"News of Food: Canned Tomato Juice on Market 25 Years," Jane Nickerson, New York Times, October 13, 1953 (p. 32)

Related foods? Tomato Sauce, Gazpacho & Bloody Mary cocktails.

Ice

"Storing food and drink in low temperatures is an ancient practice The cold air of a natural cave or the cool environment of a well-insulated underground pit or chamber worked as natural refrigerators for grains and root crops. Furthermore, just as hunters on the arid plains found their kill would dry out in the sun, so hunters of the icebound regions must have discovered that meat left in the snow or freezing, icy winds would also keep, at least until it thawed. Keeping food cool slows down the bacterial action in food, thereby helping the food stored safely for longer, a process now known as refrigeration. Microoganisms do not like the cold. It slows down their metabolism and makes them sluggish, unable to reproduce...freezing does not actually destroy the organism; it merely puts them into a chilling limbo until they and the food they inhabit are defrosted. While the hunter may have temporarily lost some meat in the freezing snow, he might also have buried some "overkill" of meat or fish in the ground to hide it from predators or rival hunting parties....Sometimes, where the right conditions were available, the technique developed of freezing food to preserve it....In...northern regions, food became frozen unavoidably, and the fact that the food was preserved was a fortunate by unsought side effect... "In warmer regions, ice was only used for cooling, although people have enjoyed chilled drinks and cooled food in the most unlikely places. Ice pits and icehouses were known to have been built in Mesopotamia almost four thousand years ago, and the powerful and wealthy men and women of Persia, Egypt, Rome, and Greece were accustomed to being served cold drinks and chilled fruits even in the hottest weather. Alexander the Great ordered trenches to be dug at Petra, filled with winter snow, and covered with oak branches so that his soldiers could drink cooled wine in summertime. As well as chilling drinks, snow and ice were also used by physicians to treat patients with fever, inflammation, and stomach complaints. So all around the Mediterranean, snow was collected from the mountains and carried down to the cities, where it was sold daily or stored in ice houses. The snow was packed hard into pits and covered with branches, straw, leaf mats, or coarse cloth. The Chinese...were harvesting and storing ice by at least 1100 B.C....Sometimes the ice had to travel many miles. Thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Egyptian royalty had their ice shipped from the mountains of Lebanon all the way to Cairo...Like sugar, ice became a part of the fabulous sparkling jewelery of banquets, with centerpieces of elaborate ice sculptures, sugar trifoni, chilly jellies, iced sherberts, and glass or silver bowls of ice-encrusted fruits...By the sixteenth century numerous palaces, estates, chateaux, abbeys, and monestaries throughout Europe, the Middle east, and China had their own icehouses. Soon, anyone with aspirations to elegant living had ice or snow houses built, and by the eighteenth century many of these had acquired architectural pretentions, with Gothic arches or Grecian pillars...The basic construction...changed little up to the nineteenth century...But ice was not just the preserve of the rich; in some parts of Europe the peasants erected simple ice stacks made from branches, heather, and pete near ponds, flooded meadows, lakes, and slow-moving rivers that froze in winterime. Although icehouses were principally used for storing ice rather than for preserving food, they gradually came to be seen as useful refrigerators for food...The increasing demand for clean, good-quality ice opened an important new market. In Europe, when a mild winter failed to produce ice, people had to look north, to Greenland and Norway...In nineteenth-century Paris and London, cooks, confectioners, butchers, fishmongers, and wine merchants all rushed to buy from ship bringing cargoes of ice form the "Greenland seas." Ice harvesting was a dangerous business...competition...soon began flooding the market..."

---Pickled, Potted and Canned: How the Art and Science of Food Preserving Changed the World, Sue Shepard [Simon & Schuster:New York] 2000 (p. 280-5)

"Ice has been used to preserve food and cool beverages for thousands of years. Wealthy Europeans brought their appreciation of icy desserts and iced drinks with them to the New World. Archaeolgists at Jamestown, Virginia, found ice pits dating from as early as the seventeenth century. The colonists cut ice from ponds, lakes, and rivers during the winter and stored it in caves and underground cellars to last through the hot summer months. In the eighteenth century, icehouse, which are more efficient than cellars, provided cold storage, as well as preserving ice for chilling food and drink and making ice cream. Ice was advertised for sale in Philadelphia newspapers as early as 1784, and Europeans visiting Philadelphia and Baltimore in the 1790s reported that Americans drank water with ice and that containers of ice were used to cool hotel rooms. The first recorded cargo of ice was shipped from New York to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1799, and between 1805 and 1860 Frederick Tudor, a Boston merchant, grew rich shipping harvested ice from Massachusetts ponds overseas. Tudor, known as the Ice King, promoted the construction and use of ice chests, sent agents to help establish businesses selling ice cream, extolled the virtues of ice for preserving food, and promoted the sale of carbonated water, which he thought tasted better cold. He even offered bar owners free ice for a year if they agreed to sell iced drinks at the same price as warm ones."

---Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, Andrew F. Smith editor [Oxford University Press:New York] 2004, Volume 1 (p. 700-1)

Recommended reading:

American Ice Harvests: A Historical Study in Techology, 1800-1918/Richard O. Cummings

...includes industry statistics, illustrations, citations to primary sources

The Frozen-Water Trade/Gavin Weightman

...details about Frederic Tudor's ice business, early 19th century

Harvest of the Cold Months/Elizabeth David

...a social history of ice and ices

Wine bottles: a short course in evolution, size & pricing

"Today it may be taken for granted that wine bottles of different colours and shapes will hold a precise capacity. Nor is it questioned that a paper label will be firmly fixed to the bottle to give a plethora of information, much of it required by law. These are recent developments. In classical antiquity wine was stored and transported in large, long jars called amphorae. They varied considerably in size but it would certainly be difficult to pour a drinking quantity form such an awkward and big vessel, without using some sort of intermediate container. The Romans invented the technique of blowing glass bottles and some of these may well have been used to serve wine. Pottery and stoneware jugs were used for centuries in Europe for serving wine, but glass took over as technology to make glass in commercial quantities spread in the 17th century, and by the end of it glass bottles were plentiful, although reserved for the upper classes. Shape. Early bottles have more or less globular bodies with long conical necks. The form developed... becoming lower and wider in Britain, while on mainland Europe the flask-shape with an oval cross-section was popular. From c. 1690 to 1720, the outline of a bottle resembled that of an onion--a wide compressed globlular body with a short neck. Larger bottles were made too, whose shape resembled an inflated balloon or bladder...By the 1720s the 'onion' became taller and the sides flatter...Naturally occurring impurities in the constituent ingredients gave glass an olive green hue which varied from pale to almost black and was beneficial to the bottled wine as it excluded light. Most bottles had an applied ring of glass just below the neck which gave an anchorage to the string used to hold in a variety of stoppers...Wine drinkers made an important discovery in the 1730s. While it was known that some vintages of wine were better than others even in prehistory, their keeping and consequent maturing qualities were not realized until the introduction of binning, the storing of wines in bottles laid on their sides...In 1821 Rickets of Bristol patented a machine for moulding bottles of uniform size and shape...Thus the modern wine bottle had evolved...From 1636, at about the time of the first appearance of glass bottles in post-Roman Britain, it was illegal to sell wine by the bottle. The consumer protection measure was on account of vintner's willingness to take advantage of the varying capacity of blown bottles. From that time and for the next 230 years, wine was sold by the measure and then bottled. Customers who bought regularly had their own bottles and had them marked in order to distinguish them from any other that might be at the vintner's premises waiting to be filled. The usual marking was the attachment at the end of the production process of a disc seal of the same glass as the bottle, upon which was impressed the owner's initials, name, or heraldic device, often accompanied by the date, Innkeepers and taverners had appropriately marked, or 'sealed', bottles too. It may be noted here that these seals did not indicate contents... Bottles with paper labels indicating the contents, first had written and later printed, emerged during the opening years of the 19th century, but in Britain the law prohibiting wine from being sold by the bottle was not relaxed until 1860... The size and shape of early bottles was, to an extent, a hit and miss affair. Perhaps the 'standard' size was the natural result of a lungful of air, but bottles were made in a variety of sizes from early times."

---Oxford Companion to Wine, Jancis Robinson editor [Oxford University Press:New York] 2nd edition, 1999 (p. 96-97)

When did the large format bottle names begin?

English language history source generally agree on the the 19th century. Entries in the Oxford English Dictionary suggest these names were not codified by one person at a specific time. They evolved. The earliest print reference cited by The Oxford English Dictionary for Rehoboam dates to 1841. Note: this OED definition does not specify bottle dimension or volume. Later definitions sometimes reference bottle size.

USA wine bottle sizes & standardization

Our survey of late 19th/early 20th century USA wine ads and menus offers regular references to bottled wine being sold in quarts and pints. Menus include both domestic and imports but don't dwell on bottle sizes. In fact? The difference between domestic and European wine bottle sizes quietly ferments until the early 1970s.

[1889]

"New-York has a fair prospect to pay $4 for every quart and $2 for every pint of champagne that it drinks in any of the fashionable hotels and restaurants after the 1st of next month."

---"A Champagne Combine, Fashionable hotels intend to put up prices," New York Times, October 19, 1889 (p. 1)

[1902]

Wine list Pabst Restaurant/Pan-American Exposition/Buffalo...wine by the pint, quart or glass.