National Vanilla Milkshake Day

Five Food Finds about Milkshakes

  • The first known printed reference to a “milkshake” dates back to 1885 and contains whiskey as one ingredient. For medicinal purposes only.
  • Milkshakes got their name from being served in bars. If the customer enjoyed the milkshake, he shook hands with the bartender. If not, the bartender didn’t get a tip.
  • According to The Guinness Book of World Records, in 2000 Ira Freehof (owner of Comfort Diners), (with a lot of help from Parmalot USA and The American Dairy Association), made the world’s largest milkshake. At 6,000 gallons it was the equivalent of 50,000 normal-sized shakes. Do you want fries with that? (Please say no, you don’t need anything else to eat or drink after that, especially not fatty fries.)
  • Malted milk powder was invented in 1897 by James and William Horlick, but it was Ivar Coulson, a soda jerk for a Walgreen’s drug store, who first added it to milkshakes in 1922. This created the malted milkshake or just plain “malt.”
  • Steven Poplawski invented the electric blender in 1922 just for milkshakes. Before that, the effort of shaking them up must have required a lot of upper body motion.

Today’s Food History

on this day in…

1861 Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins was born. He discovered what we now call ‘vitamins,’ essential nutrients needed to maintain health.

1948 The TV show ‘Toast of the Town’ premiers on CBS with Ed Sullivan as the host.

1964 ‘Chapel of Love’ by Dixie Cups is #1 on the charts

1977 The trans-Alaska oil pipeline opened. It takes oil 38 days to travel 800 miles from the fields in Prudhoe Bay to the port of Valdez.