The reason why ice cream is still considered a delicacy despite its now constant presence everywhere is a tale that goes back to the time of England’s King Charles I, who enthralled his dinner guests with his chef’s cold and sweet concoction. Charles I made sure to keep the recipe secret, until he was beheaded; soon after all of Europe was enjoying the dessert. Before the invention of refrigeration, however, ice cream remained difficult to produce and store, making it a luxury item. The breakthrough came when someone got the idea to mix in salt to keep the ice stable, and with the invention of the first ice cream mixing machines.

On this day, May 30, in 1783 William Young filed the “Johnson patent ice-cream freezer,” after buying the rights to the patent from Nancy Johnson, who invented a mixing device with a rotating paddle powered by a hand crank. Ingredients would be placed in the bucket-like device and the paddle would mix the ingredients.

The first ice-cream making machine to gain wide distribution was invented around fifty years later, by an African-American, Augustus Jackson. Jackson was working as a White House chef, churning out desserts for lavish ice cream parties thrown by the First Lady. To save time on ice-cream making, he developed a paddle-crank method quite similar to the one used by Young and Johnson. Jackson never got around to patenting his idea, but 11 years Alfred L. Cralle, who lived nearby, did.