
Brown Cow: a root beer float made with chocolate ice cream.Boston Cooler: ginger ale and vanilla ice cream (invented in Detroit, with no relation to Boston).He called it an “ice cream soda.”Ī variation of the story is that, on one hot day, Green ran out of ice for his soda fountain drinks and used vanilla ice cream from a neighboring vendor, has been put to rest by his own account, published in Soda Fountain magazine in 1910 ( source).Īlas, in those days small business owners were not trademark-oriented, and the competitors soon knocked him off.Īs the ice cream soda soda concept took off, different fountain syrups were used: birch beer, cola root beer and fruit-flavored soft drinks.īottled soft drinks became broadly available by 1950, enabling consumers to mix and match their own floats. His brainstorm: a combination of vanilla ice cream and soda water with a choice of 16 different flavored syrups. Green wanted to create something special to compete with a larger, fancier soda fountain down the street. The pressure blended the soda, although a swirl with a spoon finished the job. The “soda jerk” would add syrup to a glass, then jerk the handle of the soda water tap. In the era before bottled soft drinks, a soda fountain was a place where people would stop by for a fresh-jerked soda. There are some ideas below.Ĭredit for the invention of the ice cream float was invented by Robert McCay Green, operator of a soda fountain in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. You can do this with any flavor ice cream and any coordinating soda.


Just place a couple of scoops of ice cream in a tall glass, add the root beer, and serve with a straw and a long spoon (photo #1). ice cream soda) that combines ice cream, usually chocolate or vanilla, with root beer. August 6th is National Root Beer Float Day: a type of ice cream float (a.k.a.
