Ice Cream: The Delicious History by Marilyn Powell pg 166-210

Summary
From 1862 to 1876 Charles Ranhofer was a chef at Delmonico's in New York City. He was a showman and a master at making ice cream. He used moulds to fashion his ice creams and made it look like certain foods such as tomoatoes, potatoes, and bananas. One time he made a hen with chicks and eggs in her nest, which were made out of burnt almond ice cream, chocolate icing, spun sugar, and songe cake. In 1867, The United States of America acquired the territory of Alaska from Rusia. Ranhofer wanted to make a style of ice cream that would celebrate this moment, and create something that no one had seen before. For his creation Ranhofer wanted it to resemble an inverted cone. He moulded a Savoy biscuit at the base. He then put a layer of banana ice cream followed by a layer of vanilla ice cream. After Ranohfer froze the ice cream. He then covered the cone with meringue, and then browned it fast in a hot oven. He called it "Alaska, Florida" but in his 1894 cookbook ,The Epicurean, it was called baked Alaska.
The flavours of ice cream come from many different sources. Vanilla comes from the plant, Vanilla planifolia. This flower must be fertilized by hummingbirds or bees before it yields a bean. The bean is put into hot water, fermented for several months , wraped in straw, then sun-dried. The vanilla bean is aged for up to two years. After the flavour, vanillin, is finally extracted. Chocolate comes from the cacao bea. The cacao bean is fruit on the Theobroma cacao tree that grows in Mexico, Central America, South America, West Indies, and on the west coast of Africa. The kernels are extracted from bean, and grounded into a liquid flow or chocolate liquor. Chocolate mixes well with coffee, which comes from the coffee tree originated in Ethiopia. Vanilla, chocolate, and coffee are the main ingrediants in many ice cream recipes. The three traveled through Europe heading into many coffee houses and cafes, from which the ice cream parlour evolved.
Quote
"Benjamen Thompson became a spy for the British during the American Revolution, was briefly a statesman, and, in 1803, went to Paris, where he gave up spying for good" (Powell 179).
Reaction
As Powell starts to get into a certain topic of ice cream, she first gives a lot of background history, even if it has nothing to do with ice cream. This is a good method to use because she is not letting the reader go into a certain topic without any idea of how they got there. Powell does this numerous of times in the book which allows the reader to learn all the history of ice cream even if it is information that is indirect.