Object of the Week

No one expects…International Ice Cream Convention Day…

…well, not on a wet Sunday in St. Petersburg. But it was the International Ice Cream Convention Day that had packed the Russian streets, crowds flocking to sorbet and soft-ice stalls as my tourist group fought their way through to the great Hermitage Palace.

Catherine the Great had a sweet tooth. The numerous dinner services made for her palaces all included provision for dessert. The 797-piece service ordered from the Sevres factory in 1776 was no exception: it took nearly three years to complete and deliver. It was executed in the new classical style. Each piece bears Catherine’s cameo-style portrait and cypher, and each bears meticulously modelled and painted imitation antique cameos echoing Catherine’s own collection of over 10,000 cameos.

Ices were a crowning part of the dessert. They were made with and kept chilled by winter snow shoveled into icehouses between layers of straw. Catherine’s chefs had learnt the French craft of ice cream making from the Italian cook of an English consul based in St. Petersburg in the 1750s.

A traditional ice cream container (Seaux 'à glace') comes in three parts: a U-shaped pail, a smaller liner and a high-rimmed cover. The pail is half-filled with crushed ice, as is the cover, so the liner in between, containing the ices to be eaten, is ‘insulated’ top and bottom. But the impressive piece brought to our table on The Quizeum from the Wallace Collection had been altered and the inner liner was missing. In its place, separating cover from the pail was a grille of gilt bronze ormolu scrollwork. At some stage this ice cream container had been turned into an incense burner, a fumigator of 19th century rooms. Its 18th century function still proudly evident from the cover, with the central fountain handle frozen in time hinting at its earlier function during the pre-revolution days at the Winter Palace - many winters before today’s International Ice Cream Conventions!