A Slightly Silly Example

Okay well it might seem like a silly example...

Culture, at least I believe anyway, is tied to the economic tides. Because it is superficially the story these days, that everyone cares exclusively about science and facts and evidence (they don't; they are psychologically motivated through feelings and not through logic virtually at all), academia in particular fails to preserve cultural memory and is a deep black sink-hole for social and cultural knowledge memory.

There is no more outstanding an example to my idiosyncratic mind, than when it comes to the recipe for an 'American Sundae.' (There's the silly example bit!).

Fortnum and Mason's American Sundae,
not far off but still not the real thing

All the same, regardless of whether you think this example is silly or not, you will not find anywhere on-line any recipe or photograph for and of a genuine original 'American Sundae.' You will find countless (literally countless) things that look like an American Sundae, but you will not find one single actual American Sundae...  

Now who do we blame for this exemplary evil omission? Oxford University? Cambridge, where Stefan Halper lectures? Harvard? Yale? Princeton? ...Where?

The Sundae is a story tied to technology (the invention and industrial manufacture and widespread commercialization of refrigeration systems), and to war and patriotism, as well as to big money.

What happens if we get 'the Roaring Twenties' again?

John Jacob Astor IV is intimately associated with the invention of certain iterations of the general basic ice cream parfait, which became famous among the very well-to-do and the upper crust. Now I have been into this aspect somewhere previously but this time, I shall simply skip to the actual recipe - or so much of it which will allow you to understand that I am fundamentally correct here: nobody today has much remaining social-cultural memory of what exactly the 'Old Glory Ice Cream Sundae' is.

Categorically, it was first invented by an African-American cook. He styled his invention after the American flag - aka 'Old Glory.'

As you know, the American flag consists of 'the stars and stripes.' And the colors are Old Glory red, white, and Old Glory blue. The study of flags is known as 'vexillology.' The American athlete Martin Sheridan, said: 'this flag dips to no earthly king.'

Some people have proposed that the stars are meant to have originally been gold because gold doesn't tarnish, although they may have been originally silver, which does tarnish and turn black or green.

I have no fixed or firm view of it other than that I know what the original 'Old Glory Ice Cream Sundae' is. It includes vanilla ice cream, and cherry syrup and strawberry ice cream, and something which appears like 'star dust.' And I will not go into the 'Old Glory blue' aspect because I'm keeping most of the recipe a secret; still.

Astor owned the Knickerbocker hotel at a time when the the US was flooded with money, and when the Knickerbocker ballroom actually had specific velvet roped-off areas marked 'champagne only.' And tickets into these areas went for hundreds of dollars when the price of a hotel room for the night was $2. 

Afterwards, of course, you had the Prohibition Era - 1920 to 1933. But until then, the Knickerbocker was probably one of the most alcoholic-indulged places on the planet ever outside of Bacchus's palace!

The 'Old Glory Ice Cream Sundae' contains copious amounts of alcohol. The colt cherries or maraschino cherries used are steeped in maraschino brandy, for one thing.