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Who Invented Icebox Cakes?
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Some say they descend from Charlotte Russe, that cool lady-finger-cradled Bavarian cream created by 19th-century French celebrity chef Marie-Antoine Carême. But for me, the icebox cake is simpler, a quick 20th-century combo of cookies (or cake) and whipped cream. Like Zebra Cake. Variations on this quintessential icebox cake abound, but the original Zebra Cake -- or Chocolate Ripple Cake as it's sometimes called -- was dreamed up by Nabisco to sell the Famous Chocolate Wafers it introduced in 1924.
That same decade put thousands, if not millions, of electric refrigerators in American kitchens (indispensable for icebox cakes) and also produced such corporate food giants as General Foods, Kraft, and of course Nabisco. To push product, they set up test kitchens and hired home economists to develop recipes with mass appeal that could be pitched to magazine food editors as well as lure buyers via eye-catching ads. Needless to say, the growing national obsession with icebox cakes wasn't lost on them
Riffling through my early cookbooks, I find icebox cakes surfacing in the late '20s and gaining in popularity right through the Great Depression. Irma Rombauer's original Joy of Cooking (1931) devotes one page of the cake chapter to icebox cakes, and later under Charlottes, dishes up Date Loaf, a refrigerator jumble of graham crackers, nuts, marshmallows, dates, and whipped cream. Then bingo! Zebra Cake. Only Rombauer calls it Chocolate Wafers and Cream (and names the brand of wafers needed).
In my mother's dog-eared Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook (1939 edition), there's a Chocolate Refrigerator Cake composed of ladyfingers and devilishly rich chocolate mousse. Most of my '30s and early '40s cookbooks offer five or six icebox cake recipes: lemon, almond, orange, chocolate, pineapple, even whiskey. The majority are thinly disguised back-of-the box recipes. Or blatant pick-ups.
World War II's sugar rationing put desserts on hold, and then when that post-war novelty -- the chiffon pie -- eclipsed the icebox cake, its glory days seemed forever gone.
Until now.
Related article: Icebox Cake recipes.
Alamy
Some say they descend from Charlotte Russe, that cool lady-finger-cradled Bavarian cream created by 19th-century French celebrity chef Marie-Antoine Carême. But for me, the icebox cake is simpler, a quick 20th-century combo of cookies (or cake) and whipped cream. Like Zebra Cake. Variations on this quintessential icebox cake abound, but the original Zebra Cake -- or Chocolate Ripple Cake as it's sometimes called -- was dreamed up by Nabisco to sell the Famous Chocolate Wafers it introduced in 1924.
That same decade put thousands, if not millions, of electric refrigerators in American kitchens (indispensable for icebox cakes) and also produced such corporate food giants as General Foods, Kraft, and of course Nabisco. To push product, they set up test kitchens and hired home economists to develop recipes with mass appeal that could be pitched to magazine food editors as well as lure buyers via eye-catching ads. Needless to say, the growing national obsession with icebox cakes wasn't lost on them
Riffling through my early cookbooks, I find icebox cakes surfacing in the late '20s and gaining in popularity right through the Great Depression. Irma Rombauer's original Joy of Cooking (1931) devotes one page of the cake chapter to icebox cakes, and later under Charlottes, dishes up Date Loaf, a refrigerator jumble of graham crackers, nuts, marshmallows, dates, and whipped cream. Then bingo! Zebra Cake. Only Rombauer calls it Chocolate Wafers and Cream (and names the brand of wafers needed).
In my mother's dog-eared Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook (1939 edition), there's a Chocolate Refrigerator Cake composed of ladyfingers and devilishly rich chocolate mousse. Most of my '30s and early '40s cookbooks offer five or six icebox cake recipes: lemon, almond, orange, chocolate, pineapple, even whiskey. The majority are thinly disguised back-of-the box recipes. Or blatant pick-ups.
World War II's sugar rationing put desserts on hold, and then when that post-war novelty -- the chiffon pie -- eclipsed the icebox cake, its glory days seemed forever gone.
Until now.
Related article: Icebox Cake recipes.
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