At Large and At Small by Anne Fadiman Read Free Book Online Page B

emergency could a few scoops of ice cream possibly precipitate? It is true that circa 400 b.c., Hippocrates, or one of the anonymous writers who were later known as Hippocrates, warned thatsnow-chilled beverages might “suddenly throw… the body into a different state than it was before, producing thereby many ill effects.” It is also true that in 1997 the
British Medical Journal
noted that “ice cream headaches” can be produced by cold temperatures on the back of the palate, which stimulate the spheno-palatine ganglion to dilate blood vessels in the brain. However, the article concludedwith the heartening sentence “Ice cream abstinence is not indicated.”
    As I have said, I take a dim view of healthful ice cream, and was thus cheered to learn from a spokeswoman at the International Dairy Foods Association that sales of high-fat ice cream are going up and sales of low-fat ice cream are going down. Had I lived in eighteenth-century Naples, however, I might have softened my anti-salubritystance. According to Filippo Baldini, a physician who wrote a 1775 treatise on the medicinal properties of
sorbetti
, cinnamon ices are an efficacious remedy for diarrhea; coffee ices for indigestion; pine-nut ices for consumption; ass’s-milk ices for maladies of the blood; cow’s-milk ices for paralysis; and sheep’s-milk ices for hemorrhages, scurvy, and emaciation. This pharmacopoeia sounds rightup my alley. In fact, if Dr. Baldini were practicing today, I would add my name to his patient rolls without delay. “You’re looking a trifle emaciated, Ms. Fadiman,” he’d say. “Here’s a prescription for Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk. BlueCross BlueShield will reimburse in full.”
    Although very cold ice cream numbs the taste buds that perceive sweetness (the basis for the entreaty thatused to adorn cartons of Häagen-Dazs: “Please temper to a soft consistency to achieve the full flavor bouquet”), I prefer my ice cream untempered. I also like it even better in the winter than in the summer. Seasonal Good Humor trucks notwithstanding, it is a grave error to assume that ice cream consumption requires hot weather. If that were the case, wouldn’t Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield haveestablished their first ice cream parlor in Tallahassee instead of Burlington, Vermont, which averages 161 annualdays of frost? (Ben explains his product’s winter popularity by means of the Internal-External Temperature Differential and Equalization Theory, whereby, he claims, the ingestion of cold foodstuffs in freezing weather reduces the difference between the internal body temperature andthe ambient air temperature, thus making his customers feel comparatively warm.) Wouldn’t John Goddard, an outdoorsman of my acquaintance, have arranged for a thermos of hot chicken soup instead of a half gallon of French vanilla ice cream with raspberry topping to be airdropped to him on the summit of Mount Rainier? And wouldn’t the Nobel Prize banquet, held every year in Stockholm on the tenthof December, conclude with
crêpes Suzette
instead of
glace Nobel
? As the lights dim, a procession of uniformed servitors marches down the grand staircase, each bearing on a silver salver a large cake surrounded by spun sugar. Projecting from the cake is a dome of ice cream. Projecting from the dome is an obelisk of ice cream. Projecting from the obelisk is a flame. When the laureates—who havealready consumed the likes of
homard en gelée à la crème de choux fleur et au caviar de Kalix
and
ballotine de pintade avec sa garniture de pommes de terre de Laponie
with no special fanfare—see what is heading their way, they invariably burst into applause.
    The Greek grammarian Athenaeus tells a catty story about Diphilus, an Athenian dramatist who lived in the fourth century B.C .:
    Once upona time Diphilus was invited to Gnathaena’s house, to dine, so they say, in celebration of the festival of Aphrodite.… And one of her lovers, a stranger from