Margaret Thatcher Invented Soft-Serve Ice Cream

Margaret Thatcher was Britain's first female prime minister and, almost as important, helped invent soft-serve ice cream

By Sam Dean

April 8, 2013

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Meryl Streep, left, as the Iron Lady, in "The Iron Lady"; and the real Margaret Thatcher (Credit: Pathé / Wikimedia Commons)

Margaret Thatcher, who passed away this morning at 87, was Britain's first female prime minister, a paragon of free-market conservatism, and a good friend of Ronald Reagan. But her greatest achievement, her most lasting contribution to the great adventure that we call civilization, the work for which she will be remembered even when future space-dwelling humans have forgotten what "England" ever was, had to do with food: yes,
Margaret Thatcher helped invent soft-serve ice cream.

Before entering politics, Thatcher was an Oxford-trained chemist, and in the 1950s worked the lab where soft-serve ice cream was perfected. In the U.S., companies like Carvel and Dairy Queen had been selling soft-serve ice cream since the '30s, but it wasn't the fluffy, creamy stuff you'd expect to get from a Mr. Softee today--the original soft-serve was likely denser, since both Dairy Queen and Carvel claim that their inspiration came when they found that customers preferred ice cream that hadn't yet frozen totally solid.

But soft-serve's smooth texture doesn't just come from a temperature difference. The real secret is how much air is whipped into the mix, which makes for a fluffy cone that also costs less for small businessmen (or huge corporations) to produce. Which, as you might imagine, is where the Iron Lady comes in. Her real accomplishment was developing an emulsifier that let manufacturers whip more air into the soft-serve formula, paving the profitable way for everyone from small soft-serve vendors on up to Britain's fleet of Mr. Whippy soft-serve trucks.

So the next time you order a cone of soft serve, feel free to imagine Margaret Thatcher's face staring out at you from the sweet, milky swirls, and maybe, if there isn't anyone else around, say a brief "thank you" before biting in.