Hello, and welcome to Saver, a production of iHeartRadio. I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, standing in solo for my co host Annie Reese. Today she is on break, but we'll be back later this week. May the Force be with her always. Today, we've got a classic for you on ice cream Sundays.
Originally published in September of twenty eighteen. I was thinking about this one because we are entering this season here in the Northern Hemisphere where people enjoy eating cold things because it is unforgivably hot outside, and I had forgotten how delightful the rivalry in this one really is. So without further ado, I will let former Annie and Lauren take it.
Away and welcome to food Stuff. I'm Annie Ree's and I'm Lauren Vocal Bomb. And today we've got sort of a special episode for you. It's about ice cream Sundays.
It's a little different, uh huh.
We're going to present it as sort of a trial. Yeah, our first food stuff trial. I hope there's a lot of Law and Order sound effects? Oh yeah, can we do that? I actually never seen Law and Order, but I know the sound effect.
But that's all.
We need to get it right there. Yeah, just make that occasionally pick your spots. But okay, I think we'll really add to it.
So surely people were topping their ice cream with like stuff before the ice cream Sunday became a whole thing.
Surely it just makes sense.
Really, Oh yeah, I mean ice cream is delicious, other stuff is delicious. Put them together.
Easy as pie.
There's no put ice cream easiest pie a la mode. But a Sunday is something specific. It is which brings us to our question what is it?
Well, I would say, okay, this is Lauren's.
Okay, I would say, then ice cream Sunday requires at least two scoops of ice cream if it's scooped. If not, then I guess that just goes right out the window. Soft syruf anyway, two scoops of ice cream, some kind of sweet syrup or other like liquid sauce like hot fudge as a topping, and then a second kind of topping for like texture or just punctuation like sprinkles or
chopped nuts or like a marachino cherry on top. Some people, like Dairy Queen would a search that you don't need anything after that that liquid topping for it to be a Sunday. Their base Sunday is just ice cream and liquid topping. Everything else costs extra.
I see, But anyway, you're not mad about that at all.
I'm not mad about it. I just don't think that it's a Sunday unless it has two distinct tops things.
Okay, I see, okay.
But anyway, after those basic needs are met, you've got a lot of room for possibilities. You know, whipped cream, candy of whatever kind, whole or chopped fresh fruit, fruit compot, that chocolate sauce that you know hardens when it hits the ice cream. Oh, I kind of love that stuff, even though it creeps me out, don't We.
All love foods that are just kind of creepy when we think about them. Yep, yep. As you can imagine, we humans add all sorts of toppings to Sundays these days, from fries in Japan to bacon, and we also make huge ones like the Great Pyramid from Cabots ice Cream in Massachusetts. It comes in a bowl almost two feet in diameter, loaded with sixty pints of ice cream pints,
sixty pints, sixty pints, and twelve quarts of toppings. Oh my goodness, and on top of those toppings, you add what I would call other toppings, but they don't whipped cream, nuts, marshmallows, and a cherry on top. And allegedly it serves you and one hundred and seventy f or of your pals. Oh wow, I don't have one hundred and seventy four friends.
I don't think not that I want to eat a single bowl of ice cream with.
I'm gonna get multiple bowls if I got this thing. I'm just gonna be straight with everybody.
I've I've shared a very large ice cream Sunday with maybe like six of my friends. There was a place that we went to in high school down by the beach that had very large Sundays. But and I felt fancy as heck the time that that happened.
That sounds very fancy. That sounds like something I've only seen in movies.
Oh right, yeah, yeah, I did not wear my Bobby Sucks, but I nonetheless felt Yes, technically, banana splits and parfas stuff like that are also Sundays. It's sort of like a square rhombus kind of situation. Nutrition wise, they're like the epitome of a treat.
I mean, if you think about their name. We're going to get into this in a little bit. Sunday it's something special one day a week. I wish I had know. I wish I'd thought of that as a kid, and I could have made that argument better, but I didn't. I didn't.
It does depend highly on what kind of ice cream and toppings you involved there. It's your mileage will definitely very It's true.
My go to at DQ Dairy Queen was hot fudge Sunday, hot fudge sauce and cons that was it. Ooh nice, simple, simple.
I like a crunch Yeah, but.
Rememb when we get that frozen yogurt and I put every topic on.
Every single one, I'm still upset about it.
I am too. Do we have we have some numbers? We do?
We do? Oh, we have a bunch of delightful numbers.
So okay.
According to a Yahoo survey of about one thousand representative Americans over the age of thirteen or thirteen and over anyway, ice cream is America's favorite dessert, and twenty one percent of us prefer it to be in Sunday format.
Huh.
As of twenty fifteen, the Guinness World Record for the largest ice cream Sunday was made in Canada. It weighed twenty four point nine to one metric tons that's almost fifty five thousand pounds. About four and a half tons of that was syrup.
Oh my goodness.
And according to Guinness, it looked quote not unlike a dairy based tribute to Jaba the Hut.
Sunday, the hut there, and they.
Were not lying. It kind of did like a pink pink job of the hut. Guinness also reports a record for the longest ever ice cream dessert, a Sunday made in Texas, with about eight hundred gallons of ice cream, two thousand cans of whip cream, twenty five pounds of sprinkles, and twenty thousand cherries. It stretched almost one four hundred meters in length. That's about forty five hundred feet.
I had an aunt that told me, and I think you've redne a brain stuff episode about this, that dairy products gave you nightmares. Oh, and she used to tell me if I had too much ice cream ry to have bad dreams. I think she just didn't want me to ice email like ten PM. But can you imagine the bad dreams you'd have if you had this Lodge ice cream.
It served a lot of people.
Well, I hope so. I imagine you'd die if you try to.
Oh goodness, yeah, that's not.
No.
Guinness's most expensive dessert on record is also an ice cream Sunday, a chocolate Sunday offered for twenty five thousand dollars at a New York City restaurant in two thousand and seven. It included a blend of twenty eight premium cocos and a golden spoon encrusted with diamonds that was the buyers to keep.
Well. I guess different strokes for different folks.
And apparently ice cream Sundays are quite posh in New York City. This year, just an April, food writer Pete Wells published an article in The New Yorker titled the ice Cream Sunday Must be Stopped. It complained that like nostalgic, ice cream Sundays at restaurants are generally as insipid as they are ubiquitous. He was real mad at them.
Huh. It's interesting because to me, I don't like if I'm at an ice cream restaurant, I don't order the Sunday, but I do get ice cream with two toppings, which it's just in my head. I don't think of it as a Sunday, but I guess it is.
Yeah, I think that. Yeah, if I'm going to order ice cream from an ice cream place, I definitely get a liquid topping and then a crunchy topping for texture.
Yeah, I'm going to have to reevaluate my Sunday definition.
Oh okay, questioning. Thanks, Yeah, but this is an episode of many questions.
It is it is, and we're.
Going to get into that after we get back from quick break for our sponsor.
And we're back. Thank you sponsors.
Yes, thank you.
So now our trial begins. Yes, yes, because the ice cream Sunday is the source of much contention. Oh yeah, people fight over it. There are songs, like fight songs. There are official legal documents in what has been dubbed the Sunday Wars. The name is a source of debate too, Oh yeah, yeah, Like.
Like why it's called a Sunday, that's correct, Laurence. Why it's spelled with that E instead of a Y. Yes, or sometimes with an I H monster.
Yes, so the name. There's The popular, possibly apocryphal story is that the blue laws here in the States, and these are laws prohibiting certain activities on Sundays for religious reasons. Did not allow for ice cream sodas on Sundays because of there and this is a quote a document somewhere frilliness. No frilliness on Sundays. No, no clergy preached against quote sucking soda on the Sabbath and any day really, but
especially on the Sabbath. So the Sunday with an E, along with names like the Sunday sund I and Psalm Dso n Dhi were used to maybe lessen the angry response from the religious community who might not appreciate this luxurious treat being named after their holy day. I see. In nineteen forty five, a famous newspaper columnist by the name of H. L. Menca And published a book called
The American Language Supplement One. It included an entry about the suffix day Dae, which read quote most plausible of their theories abscribes the introduction of the Sunday itself to George Hallower of Marshall, Illinois, and the invention of its name to George Giffy or Jiffy, of man Manatoc, Wisconsin. He also alleged that the origins of the Sunday in Wisconsin came before all other origin stories which he probably heard this story in Wisconsin, and this was a shot fired in the Sunday wars.
Oh yes, because people are serious about their origin stories of the Sunday.
They are so serious, deadly serious. Oh no, perhaps not that serious.
Maybe it's deadly, but quite series.
Quite serious. Three towns claimed to be the home of the first ice cream Sunday, although one of those is more technical. And we present before you the evidence. You must decide for yourself.
Undone, Yes, all right.
Origin story one, two Rivers, Wisconsin, current population two thousand. First, all right. In eighteen eighty one, George Hallower walked into ed Berner's ice cream parlor and asked the owner, Edward Burners, for an ice cream soda. One problem though it was a Sunday, Sunday to day, Sunday the day.
Oh no, you can't drink a soda on a Sunday.
That's right, Lauren, you can't. Undeterred, mister Berners came up with a solution, a dish full of ice cream topped with chocolate syrup. This was unique because at the time, chocolate syrup was reserved for making flavored ice cream sodas. Hallower and Burners both were impressed with this treat, and Burners made it a special at his store for the price of one nickel. The dessert was a huge hit. Not too much evidence exists to back this up, though.
One thing the town likes to bring up is a nineteen twenty nine interview published in the Two Rivers Reporter newspaper with Edward Berners. In the article, Burners describes how the Sunday came to be allegedly quote, one night, Halloa dropped in and ordered a dish of ice cream. As I was serving it, he spied a bottle of chocolate syrup on the backbar, which I use for making sodas. Why don't you put some of that chocolate on a
ice cream, he asked. You don't want to ruin the flavor of the ice cream, I protested, but Hallara answered, I'll try anything once, and I poured it on the chocolate. Hallara liked it, and the ice cream Sunday was born. Twist though, oh no, yeah, there are a lot of twists in this episode of Your Prepared. In eighteen eighty one, which is when Berner's claims this went down, he would have been eighteen years old, which is a bit young to own your own store.
Oh I see.
Even his obituary acknowledged that he quote claimed to be the originator of the ice cream Sunday. The Wisconsin State Historical Society, though, does not have any such doubt. They officially recognized Two Rivers as the home of the first Sunday. A plaque was put up in nineteen seventy three to make clear to any who would dare a question that Two Rivers is in fact the true birthplace of the
ice cream Sunday quote. In eighteen eighty one, George Hollower asked Edward Z. Berner, the owner of a soda fountain at fourteen oh four fifteenth Street, to top a dish of ice cream with chocolate syrup with chocolate sauce. Hitherto used only for ice cream sodas. The concoction cost a nickel and soon became very popular, but was sold only on Sundays. One day, a ten year old girl insisted she had a dish of ice cream with that stuff
on top, saying they could pretend it was Sunday. After that, the confection was sold every day, and many flavors, it lost its Sunday only association to be called in all caps ice creams Sunday when a glassware salesman plays an order with his company for the long canoe shaped dishes in which it was served as Sunday dishes.
And there you have it.
That's pretty, that's legit, but also it bold.
It uses capslock. I mean, I don't know what's legit outside of the use of capslock.
Who knows. It's very serious. Indeed, visitors to the town can also visit a replica of Ed Berner's ice cream parlor at the Washington House Hotel Museum and it's always listeners if you have been there.
Oh, please send pictures, please placeies please. Yeah.
Depending on the source, Manachewaik, Wisconsin might come up in this origin story as well as mentioned in that Menen piece we talked about it the top minutes back. Competitor of Berner's, George Jiffy or Giffe, started serving the same
ice cream treat. However, he thought five cents was too cheap, so he sold it only on Sundays, and because of that fact, it started to be known as the Sunday The profits became too good to sell only once a week, so he changed the name to Sunday with an E and sold it on any old day.
Okay, Okay, Well, so that's that's our So that's our first origin story. Yep, Okay. We've got a competitor, and that competitor is Ithaca, New York. Current population seven hundred and fifty six.
So a bit bigger than two rivers, A.
Little bit bigger, a little bit bigger. This is a city that's up in the western bit of New York State, in the Finger Lakes region. It's right on Cyoga Lake, and Cornell University lives here. It lived there back when Ithaca's story about the ice cream Sunday began. They claimed to have such detailed documentation that they can nearly pinpoint the hour that the first Sunday was served.
Ooh oh oh uh huh.
So April third, eighteen ninety two, it's a Sunday. The reverend of the local Unitarian church, one John M. Scott, visited the Plat and cult pharmacy after services. This was a common occurrence. Mister Platt, that's Chester c. Plat for your information, was the church's treasurer, so they often met up after services. To talk about stuff. Platt had his fountain clerks scoop them up two bowls of an el ice cream, and then Platt stopped and topped each with cherry syrup and a candied cherry.
Oh.
And Platt and Scott found the result so tasty and so attractive that they decided to name the dish. They were like, this has to have a name. It got too yeah, and Scott suggested that they name it for the day that it was created, the Cherry Sunday Ah. Two days later, an ad ran in the Ithaca Daily Journal for a Cherry Sunday, a new ten cent ice cream novelty served only at Platin Cult's famous day and night soda fountain.
They really didn't waste any time. I'm selling that.
No, Wow, immediately Yeah, like like place the ad the next day runs the day after that.
Yeah.
And this tale has its own Depression era corroboration. In nineteen thirty six, apparently having read newspaper articles with other origins of the Sunday, the clerk from Platin could who was there that day, Mister DeForest Christians wrote into an Ithaca Historian with his version of the tale.
As told above. So intrigue, Yes, Sunday intrigue. But we have another we have another claim.
Oh goodness.
Yeah, and this one comes to us from Evanston, Illinois, current population seventy four thousand, eight hundred and ninety five. And this is where Northwestern University is, which a good friend of mine went to and I visited to her a lot. So I have been to Evanston, Illinois. Okay, have you had a Sunday there? Oh?
I did.
It was peanut butter Maurice's cup anywhere cream and I have a picture of me eating it, and I look so happy. I was so happy.
You look happy just thinking about it.
I am. Towards the end though, I was not as happy because it was quite sweet. But yeah, it's very enjoyable. So this is the one that I mentioned. Is more technical. They could have been a condenda. They don't really claim to be the creator of the Sunday the thing, but they do claim ownership of the name ice cream Sunday. Okay, that they say they coined in the eighteen nineties. At the time, Evanston was not Evanston, but Chicago's heaven or Heavenstown.
Heavenstown was not heaven though at least not for soda lovers. They led the charge when it came to outlawing the Sunday sona menace, as they called it. As the name might suggest, they were pretty religious. In Heavenstown, they had an ordinance on the books making the sale of ice cream sodas against the rules. We'll say on Sunday. Garwood's Drugstore came up with work around selling an ice cream soda without the soda on Sundays, so just the ice
cream and the syrup aka a Sunday. The local Christian Women's Temperance Union okayed it, saying it was better than outcaul. Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, But that's not all. Oh no, Sunday Sunday Sunday. So we have origin story four through eight and plus even more. Buffalo, Cleveland, New Orleans, and many other cities also say they invented the Sunday but until they present more evidence, they're gonna have to take a back seat.
M m.
And speaking of evidence, we have some. Oh yeah, but first we have one more quick break for a word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you. Our first bit of evidence comes to us from the Two Rivers City Council, and they released a resolution in two thousand and six titled Resolution formally challenging the City of Ithaca, New York's claim to be quote birthplace of the ice cream Sunday.
This is this is a legal resolution. It is it was I think mostly in good fun. I think mostly, But they like they like sent it to the Mayor of Ithaca.
I think they did, indeed.
And as it is beautiful, we're going to read a few excerpts from it.
Yeah, And I just want you to keep in mind that we trim this down quite a bit.
Ye, this is not the entire thing.
No, No, it went on far longer, far longer. Whereas it is only fitting and proper that the coolest city in America's dairyland be afforded sole possession of this title.
And whereas it has recently come to our attention that Ithaca, New York, not content with just promoting its status is home to one of America's great universities in the Finger Lakes region of beautiful Upstate New York, has once again dusted off its claim to be birthplace of the ice cream Sunday.
Whereas Ithaca's experience with ice cream Sundays is a relatively recent vintage, dating to Chester Platt's fabrication of a cherry Sunday at his drugstore Soda Fountain in eighteen ninety two, a full eleven years after Ed Berner's Sundays began broadening children's smiles and adults wastelines in our community on the shore of Lake Michigan.
Now, therefore, be it resolved that the City of Two Rivers reasserts its status as the birthplace of the ice cream Sunday.
Be it further resolved that the City of Ithaca is hereby directed to cease and assist from its continued claims of being birthplace of the ice cream Sunday, lest the City of Two Rivers be forced to take further action to set the historical record straight.
And be it further resolved that the good citizens of Ithaca are urged to henceforth direct their energies to more appropriate pursuits like cheering on the athletic teams of Cornell University and celebrating the beauty of the Finger Lakes region, while leaving ice Cream Sundays to the town that knows them best, Two Rivers, Wisconsin, who.
They are not joking around. It's a beautifully pinned.
It, is it? You know? I couldn't. I couldn't have written that. I don't have the legal wherewithal.
But Ithaca did not take this lying down. The next year, in two thousand and seven, two Ithaca High School senior years interning at the History Center in Tompkins County, spent six months scouring documents to prove that Ithaca is the rightful heir to the Sunday throne. Their search for out several relevant pieces of information. Yes. Exhibit A the ad published on April fifth, eighteen ninety two, in the Ithaca Daily Journal. This is the oldest record of the ice cream Sunday that we know of.
And Exhibit A one because there's there's another ad a couple months later from May twenty eighth, eighteen ninety two, for a strawberry Sunday made and served exactly right at the Soda Fountain of Platin.
Cult exactly clear write indeed. Exhibit B a brief from the Ithaca Daily Journal's town Talk section published April eleventh, eighteen ninety two. This confirms the date, time, location, and ingredients of the cherry Sunday.
Exhibit C the original Platin Cult Pharmacy ledger books found buried in the archives of Cornell University. These ledgers indicate that the pharmacy had all the makings for their Cherry Sunday by the early eighteen nineties, and also back up Christensen's the store clerks story concerning the dates of his employment at the pharmacy.
Exhibit D the letter written by DeForest Christians in nineteen thirty six found in the archives of the History Center in Tompkins County. And Christians also said that the Sunday was popular with Cornell students and that it must have spread to other places when they went home for the holidays or graduated and moved away.
And Exhibit E a letter from one William Henderson, a Washington, d c. Trademark attorney, to Platin Cult Pharmacy, dated eighteen ninety four. The letter confirms that the Sunday not only existed at the pharmacy by eighteen ninety four, but had reached a level of popularity that Platin Cult were seeking a national trademark. They did not get the trademark, but a decade later Sundays would be available around the world, and the issue with the trademark was this at a
national level. You needed an internationally traded product in order to procure a trademark. So the attorney who wrote the letters suggested the Platin cult contact instead of New York State Department about local protections.
And you might be thinking, in the face of all of this documentation and evidence, Two Rivers might bow out Nope, no, nope. In fact, they well, basically their response was maybe it did happen, but you can't prove it didn't. If I had to sum it up. One residents of Twos sent the mayor of Ithaca postcards, including one from the ghost of Ed Burners himself. Ah, or that's what they had
just read. Anyway. The mayor also received a DVD containing a Sunday fight song performed by the proud people of Two Rivers.
It's to the tune of Wisconsin State's fight song called on Wisconsin, and the excellent podcast Food non Fiction It's a terrific show on the radio Public Network also has an episode about this whole Sunday fight thing, and they tracked down a copy of this recording in Two Rivers in Wisconsin history was made and our pride in that first Sunday. It will never fade made right here by old Ed Berner's eighteen eighty one. Now we celebrate that
Sunday and have lots of fun. Others try to claim the Sunday started in their towns, but the story of our Sunday turns smiles into frowns. Top with chocolate or with cherries and with lots of nuts. Try to claim our Sunday, and we'll kick you in your butts.
Whoa, it takes a turn there, it really did. It was all happiness and smiles and then kicking your mind. That sounds like Wisconsin. My ex is he was from Wisconsin, so I've been several times. Uh huh. And he actually was the one that got me turned onto this whole Sunday debate because he has been down to Two Rivers.
Oh yeahm m.
He did a report on it in elementary school. That's so cute. Yeah. But if AKA didn't back down from this either, no, nope. In response, they penned their own Sunday fight song called Two Rivers Police.
And this one is sung to the tune of Moon River if you're familiar with.
That, Yes, And they mentioned this on their tourism website. Just by the way they have this excerpt, two Rivers, Why live in denial? The story you compile won't play. You're sign maker, a truth faker. Without Sunday proof, your claims melting away. Ed Berner's off to fool the world. There's such a lot of fools, you see, though sometimes the truth may offend. Still you can pretend, my sweet Wisconsin friend, two rivers, please, so we'll enter that into
the the evidence. Yeah, two songs, two Sunday fight songs. Oh and yeah, so I mean verdict, the Sunday war wages on. I don't know that it will ever come to an end. What if they had a big ice cream food fight.
Oh that sounds extremely messy.
Yes it does.
Annie has a twinkle in her eye.
You guys, I want to be like some kind of officiator or judge of this. This one was a lot of fun to do. It also, let us practice and uh, I guess demonstrates everyone why we aren't lawyers.
Oh yeah, no, certainly that's not no, not that organized.
No, but we did have fun dramatically reading court documents about the ideas.
Oh yeah, if anyone ever wants that to happen, let us.
Know, yeah, but please let us know where you stand on this ice cream Sunday debate.
Yeah, you know, I think you know, it sounds like one of those like like Zeitgeist things that kind of just like kind of like came up out of, you know, the human consciousness. Around that time. People had ice cream, they had syrups, they put them together. They were delicious.
It's true, but I think I think it's I don't know. Oh no, the two Rivers people are gonna send as a DVD. Actually, I would love that, right.
Oh sounds so delightful, it does. That brings us to the end of this classic episode. We hope you enjoyed revisiting it as much as we did. If you've been to any of these places, or if you have any stories or strong opinions about Sundays, we would love to hear them. You can email us at Hello atsaverpod dot com, or find us on social media. We are on Instagram and blue Sky at Saverpod, and we would love to
hear from you. Save is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, you can visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our superproducers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and we hope that lots more good things are coming your way.