If you have a grandmother from the South, then you know the term “snow cream.” It is the oldest southern recipe passed down from generations. It requires only four ingredients: milk, sugar, vanilla extract, and of course snow. If you were raised by a TRUE southern grandma, then you may have grown up eating snow cream with raw eggs, but that ingredient has since been removed by most families for safety purposes. There was only one rule though: never make snow cream with the first snow.
Here is a history lesson for the youngins. Snow cream is actually the original ice cream dating back to 2700 BC. There are records showing that Persia made desserts with snow and honey around 500 BC, literally the second century. Since then, snow-based desserts have made their way around the world. It’s rumored that Marco Polo brought back the idea for this frozen dessert to his home in Venice.
The original snow cream recipe:
- 1/2 cup of sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/2 cup of milk
- A big bowl of snow (as every old recipe goes with zero true measurement)
My favorite part about our grandparents’ generation is that they never measured anything. They truly cooked from their hearts. They used phrases such as “a dash, handful, spoonful,” and my favorite…”just eyeball it.” I’m always outraged when I try to make an old recipe. What constitutes a handful? Are we talking I can’t close my hand or just enough to fill my hand? The world will never know. If you ask anyone over the age of 75 their response will be, “just a handful.”
That generation is truly special. Their knowledge came from family and books, not TikTok and Wikipedia. I will never forget some of the sayings my great-grandmother had:
- “Never make snow cream out of the first snowfall.” She believed it wasn’t clean. This logic always was flawed to me because well…science, but whatever Mamaw says, goes.
- “Never go to bed with your hair wet or you will catch pneumonia.” While going to bed with wet hair doesn’t cause pneumonia, Mamaw was onto something. It does increase breakage and weakens the hair follicles. Thanks for making sure my hair was healthy Mamaw.
- “If you get a bee sting, chewing tobacco will take away the sting, but it has to be chewed.” There is absolutely zero scientific evidence behind this, but people do say the pain goes away.
- “If you burn yourself, put mustard on it.” This is another belief with zero science behind it and the internet actually highly discourages this. However, from experience, I do this and it works.
