Did you know a black man invented the ice cream scoop?
Born on September 4, 1866, in Kenbridge, Lunenburg County, Virginia, Cralle worked for his father in the carpentry trade as a young man.
According to BlackPast, Cralle left for Washington D.C. where he attended Wayland Seminary, a branch of the National Theological Institute, founded by the American Baptist Home Mission Society immediately after the Civil War to help educate newly freed African Americans.
Cralle went on to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and worked as a porter at a drugstore and at a hotel. It was during his work at the hotel that he developed the idea of the ice cream scoop.
He had seen ice cream servers struggle to get the confection desired by the customer into the cone they were usually holding. He noticed that the ice cream sticks to spoons and ladles, usually requiring the server to use two hands and at least two separate implements to serve customers.

Cralle had developed an interest
Meanwhile, Cralle had developed an interest in mechanics while working with his father so he created a mechanical device now known as the ice cream scoop.
He applied for and received a patent on February 2, 1897, with Patent #576395.
His invention could be operated with one hand.The Mold and Disher was strong, durable, effective, and inexpensive and it could be constructed in almost any desired shape, such as a cone or a mound, with no delicate parts that could break or malfunction.Cralle became a successful Pittsburgh business promoter and worked as the assistant manager of the Afro-American Financial, Accumulating, Merchandise, and Business Association in Pittsburgh.Even though he developed and patented the first ice cream scoop, Cralle profited little or nothing from his invention.He later experienced some harrowing tragedies. His wife and one of his daughters died in 1918 of a communicable disease.
In 1920, he lost his only son to another disease. Later in 1920, Cralle himself was killed in an automobile accident in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania leaving behind his only surviving daughter Anna Cralle.
The original ice cream scoop was invented by Alfred L. Cralle in 1897, and amazingly after 116 years, six moon landings, and the invention of astronaut ice cream, designers are still finding ways to reinvent these specialized spoons.
The latest attempt at perfecting the removal of pistachio ice cream from a paperboard package is the $39 Belle-V Ice Cream Scoop. It doesn’t bring many new ideas to the product category, but tries to perfect existing features.
The Belle-V started life as a homework assignment.
Ulrich is a professor at Wharton, as well as the owner of one of the largest ice cream scoop collections in North America, and was teaching a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on product development.
Looking to illustrate his lessons with practical examples, he found his muse in the freezer chest and decided to reinvent the simple scooper.
A series of crude wooden mock-ups
A series of crude wooden mock-ups followed and soon he struck on a patent-pending solution that angled the head of the gadget allowing for a more comfortable scooping motion that doesn’t work against the natural motion of your wrist.
Knowing that his pinewood prototypes wouldn’t work in the mass market he turned to Palo Alto-based design firm Lunar to provide a cool industrial design.
Instead of coming up with a design that required multiple parts or chemical fillers, Lunar designed the Belle-V as a single chunk of aluminum.
This makes the gourmet gadget durable, easy to manufacture, and aluminum’s high thermal conductivity channels your body’s heat directly into the tub of Ameri-Cone Dream helping it.
slice through even the most freezer burnt pint. But the most novel part might be the slight lip that protrudes above the handle when you’re scooping ice cream.
The idea is that you’re not jabbing the spoon into the ice cream, so much as scraping it out. The lip collects the ice cream into a ball.
Ice cream
Ice cream (derived from earlier cream ice)[1] is a sweetened frozen food typically eaten as a snack or dessert.
It may be made from dairy milk or cream and is flavoured with a sweetener, either sugar or an alternative, and a spice, such as cocoa or vanilla, or with fruit such as strawberries or peaches.
It can also be made by whisking a flavored cream base and liquid nitrogen together. Colorings are sometimes added, in addition to stabilizers.
The mixture is cooled below the freezing point of water and stirred to incorporate air spaces and to prevent detectable ice crystals from forming.
The result is a smooth, semi-solid foam that is solid at very low temperatures (below 2 °C or 35 °F). It becomes more malleable as its temperature increases.

Origins
The origins of frozen desserts are obscure although several accounts exist about their history.
Some sources describe ice cream-like foods as originating in Persia as far back as 550 BCE[4][5] while others claim that the Roman Emperor Nero had ice collected from the Apennine Mountains.
to produce the first sorbet mixed with honey and wine. Although sorbets are believed to have been invented in Persia,[6][5][7][8][9] .
other accounts say ice cream originated in the Mongol Empire and first spread to China during its expansion.[10]
resource: wikipedia
When did Alfred L cralle invent the ice cream scoop?
Alfred Cralle received a U. S. patent for the Ice-Cream Mold and Disher on February 2, 1897. His invention of the mechanical ice cream scoop, a staple in almost every household around the world, is notable.
How old is Alfred Cralle?
52 years (1866–1919)
s Alfred L cralle still alive?
Deceased (1866–1919)
How did sundae get its name?
Plainfield, Illinois
A local belief is that a Plainfield druggist named Mr. Sonntag created the dish “after the urgings of patrons to serve something different.” He named it the “sonntag” after himself, and since Sonntag means Sunday in German, the name was translated to Sunday, and later was spelled sundae.