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In addition to these are a certain varying number of itinerant vendors whose
ices are in nearly all cases made without the City. It is a difficult matter at
present to ascertain where the premises are situated, but this will be overcome
as soon as the Act comes into force.
The Manufacture.
At the outset it may be stated that, generally speaking, the materials are
good in the sense that they are not unfit for food, and certainly their
condition is not such as to give rise to the symptoms met with.
There are practically four methods of manufacture:—
(i.) The real ice cream, which cannot be sold at a low price, and which is
made simply by mixing cream (with a small proportion of milk), fruit
or fruit pulp and sugar. This mixture is then at once frozen. This
form of ice cream was not implicated.
(ii.) Milk is flavoured with fruit, or fruit essence and sugar, and has then
added to it a small quantity of dissolved gelatine, and at once frozen.
In these two processes there is no boiling, and both are frozen
immediately after mixture.
(iii.) This is the ordinary "icecream" as vended in shops and in the
streets. Milk is boiled, either with or without the addition of some
form of starch (generally corn flour) with a certain number of eggs,
sugar and flavouring. Practically the number of eggs used varies
inversely with the amount of starch, the effect of both being to thicken
the mixture, and in some cases the practice has been to at once freeze
the mixture ; in others, in order to economise the consumption of ice,
the heated liquid has been allowed to cool naturally, under conditions
to which reference will again be made.
(iv.) This method of manufacture was only met with in one case. A
freezing mixture is bought which contains all the materials in a dry
powder, and all that is necessary is to boil a certain quantity of this in
milk, and subsequently freeze it. This "ice cream" was found to be
wholesome.
The important stage of the operation would appear to be that between the
boiling and freezing.
Professor Klein, in his report, called special attention to the fact that the
majority of the specific pathogenic bacilli discovered in several of the samples
were of a non-sporing variety, and that, therefore, if originally present in the
material, would have been destroyed by boiling, and, if found subsequently,
must have gained access to the material while cooling.
The subsequent freezing, while it might inhibit such bacillus, would
certainly not destroy it, and on ingestion and melting its growth and
development would again commence.