What Makes Philadelphia-Style Ice Cream So Unique?

Ice cream is one of mankind's greatest creations, with its mass availability in no small thanks to the modern invention of refrigeration — no one wants to think about a time before you could pull a pint of Ben & Jerry's out of your freezer whenever you felt like it. But there isn't just one kind of ice cream around the globe; there are a whole bunch. You're familiar with a lot of these — sorbet, gelato, frozen yogurt — but you might not have heard the term "Philadelphia ice cream" before.

So what is Philadelphia-style ice cream? Chances are you've had Philadelphia-style ice cream before, because it's quite common in the United States. It may have come from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but it isn't limited to the City of Brotherly Love, and is often also called "American ice cream" or "New York ice cream." As to what makes it unique, that's a question that comes down to one simple answer: eggs. Philadelphia-style ice cream doesn't have any of them.

Traditional French ice cream (different from French's mustard ice cream, which, somewhat alarmingly, does exist), or hard custard, is made with milk, cream, egg yolks, and sugar. So far, so simple. Philadelphia-style ice cream simply leaves out the eggs entirely, creating a light, fluffy ice cream that incorporates a lot of air — and one that's quick to make since it doesn't require a custard base. It's one of the more common ice cream styles in the USA, though most scoop shops tend to use more traditional French ice cream or even New England ice cream.

As to why you'd pick Philadelphia-style over more traditional hard custard, it tends to do much better with more delicate flavors that might otherwise get lost in a richer base. Fruit ice creams in particular tend to do very well with Philadelphia-style. The downside is all that air means it gets icy pretty quickly due to the lack of eggs as a stabilizer.

Philadelphia-style ice cream connects to Philadelphia, but only through the unconfirmed legend of its creation. In the 1830s, a former White House chef named Augustus Jackson moved back to his hometown of Philadelphia and opened his own confectioner's shop. Jackson is commonly believed to be the first confectioner to add salt during the ice cream process to make the ice melt slower (it's why he's sometimes called "the Father of Ice Cream" even though ice cream itself long predated him). It's also believed that Jackson was the one who discovered how to make ice cream without eggs — although there's no concrete proof this is what happened, as Jackson's recipes were never written down. Still, there are no competing origin stories here.

So next time you enjoy ice cream on the East Coast, tip your hat to August Jackson and his legacy of Philadelphia desserts. Maybe he created it, and maybe he didn't, but either way, it's not going anywhere.