Ithaca is Cold and Sweet: The Origin of the Ice Cream Sundae

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There are many reasons to love Ithaca, NY: a pretty lake, interesting people, lots of arts and culture, great food…

And it’s in this culinary category that our little town has a special claim to fame (and to my heart): Ithaca is the birthplace of the ice cream sundae. 

(Just one of many fun facts about Tompkins County.)

I know, it makes you stop in your tracks to imagine a time when ice cream wasn’t regularly doused in chocolate sauce or piled high with whipped cream and nuts, but those dark times did exist. Luckily, that was well over a century ago.

Let me tell you a bit about that magical moment when a culinary hero put the literal cherry on top of the ice cream sundae.

What is an ice cream sundae?

Before we go down memory lane, let’s start with some ice cream sundae facts.

In all likelihood, you know exactly what a sundae is, but just in case there’s any question: An ice cream sundae is an American dessert consisting of at least one scoop of ice cream, topped with some combination of sauce, whipped cream, nuts, candies, and other fun things.

A classic sundae might contain vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce or hot fudge, whipped cream, and a cherry on top.

Other ice cream sundae toppings you may consider include caramel, marshmallow, fruit sauce (strawberry, cherry, pineapple…), bananas and other sliced fruit, peanuts, chopped nuts, gummy worms, chocolate chips, cookies, sprinkles…

How Ithaca became the birth place of the ice cream sundae

Now, the practice of serving ice cream with toppings actually predates the sundae. As food writer Michael Turback recounts in his sundae-themed book, A Month of Sundaes, Thomas Jefferson brought a love for ice cream back with him from his ambassadorship in Paris, and at Monticello he had his cooks adorn vanilla ice cream with maple syrup and Savoy cookies (Turback, pg. 19).

But not until the late 19th century did a sundae become a concept, a unique dish with a name.

It happened on a Sunday in April. After delivering his sermon at the Unitarian Church, the Reverend John M. Scott made his way to the Platt & Colt Pharmacy on State Street to visit his friend Chester Platt, the drugstore owner.

DeForest Christiance, a clerk at the pharmacy at that time, wrote a statement several decades later, describing his memories of that historic moment: 

About 45 years ago, on a Sunday afternoon, John M. Scott, then pastor of the Unitarian Church, and Chester Platt were having their usual Sunday confab in back of the prescription counter, when Mr. Platt proposed that they have some refreshment. Mr. Platt then came up to the soda fountain, where I was holding forth, asking for two dishes of ice cream, and on each he placed a candied cherry, then, after considering a bit, he poured cherry syrup over them, making a very attractive looking dessert. (cited in Turback, pp. 31-32)

They decided to call it Cherry Sunday to commemorate its day of invention. Platt went on to concoct strawberry, chocolate, pineapple, and other versions.

On April 5, 1892, he placed an ad in the Ithaca Daily Journal for the Cherry Sunday, the first of several announcing variations of the dish.

Turback says that the new dessert spread with Cornell students who traveled to their hometowns and requested it from local soda fountains.

In 2007, two Ithaca High School seniors worked with The History Center in Tompkins County to unearth the facts about the ice cream sundae’s history. The documents they assembled provide pretty good circumstantial evidence for the Ithaca story. You can review them here.

Competing claims to the ice cream sundae

Given the popularity of the dish, it’s not surprising that there are several towns claiming to be the place where the ice cream sundae was invented.

• Two Rivers, Wisconsin: In this alternative ice cream sundae background story, a Baltimore newspaperman named Henry Louis Mencken traced the origin of the “sundae” (which he despised as a misspelled word and a “soda-fountain mess”) to this port city on Lake Michigan. In his book The American Language, published in 1919, he describes that the owner of the town’s ice cream parlor, Edward C. Berners, topped some ice cream with chocolate sauce at the urging of customer George Hallauer. While this is said to have taken place on July 7, 1881, there is no written evidence other than a plaque in Two Rivers’ central square, which wasn’t installed until 1973.

• Manitowoc, Wisconsin: In yet another version of ice cream sundae history, a little girl asked soda fountain owner George Giffy to pour chocolate syrup (normally used in chocolate soda) over vanilla ice cream. He complied for an extra nickel. Because he deemed a 10-cent ice cream too pricey for regular workdays, Giffy is said to have marketed the dessert to the fancy after-church crowd with the name “sundae.”
• Buffalo, New York: The Stoddard Brothers drugstore was the first in town to install a soda fountain. One day, the legend goes, they ran out of soda, so Charley Stoddard told clerks to pour the fruit syrup over ice cream instead. Apparently no one knows when this happened, though.
• Norfolk, Virginia: At the end of the 19th century, the sale of alcohol and soda was prohibited on Sundays (thanks to “blue laws”), so one soda fountain owner got very technical about it by piling ice cream, fruit syrup, and berries into a glass but not adding soda water.
• Evanston, Illinois: Here these same blue laws were observed so strictly that the town was sometimes called “Heavenston,” and the invention story follows the same lines as Norfolk’s. Turback points out that Evanston could, however, make a good case for how the sundae got its name. Perhaps it was through William C. Garwood, a proprietor of a drugstore who had a clever streak and may have altered the spelling to appease those offended by “the Sunday.”
• Plainfield, Illinois: In this final version of where the sundae got its name, a druggist named Sonntag (German for “Sunday”) tried to please a customer by pouring syrup over ice cream, and then he decided to name the dish after himself.

(I got this information from Turback’s chapter “The Great Pretenders,” where you can find more details.)

Maybe there’s something to these other stories…maybe not. As a quasi-“townie” in Ithaca, I’m admittedly biased. But as an academic, I also like hard evidence, and Ithaca has something to show for its claims. 

So I’m sticking with the Ithaca version of the ice cream sundae origin story.

Ice cream sundaes in Ithaca today

While the drugstore in which the sundae was first created is long gone, the Ithaca Unitarian church still commemorates the Unitarian minister’s role in the process by celebrating Sundae Sunday. Every year, members hand out free sundaes to the community during Porchfest in September.

And of course sundaes are available year-round in numerous fabulous ice cream shops. I did some research and rounded up the best ones in Ithaca for you. I think Mr. Platt would approve.