Ice Cream s MetamorphosisUtah s ice cream industry has recommended that its products which fall below the 12 per cent minimum butterfat content be clearly designated as iced milk. That seems fair enough. The State Agriculture Department was told at a Capitol hearing that some frozen products contained only 6 per cent to 7 per cent butterfat. Frankly, we suspect that the report is on the conservative side.The current controversy will set many pre drive in old timers to pondering the changes the typically American dessert has undergone since it really was ice cream. The person who has never taken his turn at the ice cream freezer, either turning the handle or sitting on the contraption to hold it still, has missed an experience second only to that of tasting ice cream that is ice cream. Many persons without a gray hair on their heads can remember when they were paid 50 cents by the corner confectioner to turn the crank on the ice cream freezer. The job was not one for a sissy, but the pay also usually included a heaping dish of the delicious stuff. We wouldn t guess as to butterfat content of ice cream in those days, but there was a certain something about it. Maybe part of the delicious ness came from working for it.One hundred years ago this summer, Jacob Fussel, a Baltimore milkman, discovered he could augment his business by freezing and sweetening his cream. Thus was born an industry which this year will produce 600, 000, 000 gallons of sweet stuff, of which there are 201 different flavors and a variety of gooey forms. Mr. Fussel would be amazed at what he started. So would Dolly Madison, who reportedly served ice cream earlier than 1851 in the White House.Then came the gadget age and hundreds of ice cream freezers gathered cobwebs in the cellar or were hauled off to the dumps. The ice bin disappeared with the carriage and horse stable. Ice cream went on the assembly line and came out in fancy packages, sometimes properly labeled frozen custard, frosted malt, and so forth. Good as it may taste, it is only a third cousin once removed from real ice cream. Now powdered milk is sweetened and flavored according to formula at the creamery also a misnomer and shipped, ready for mixing, to the producer, who distributes it under his brand name. Others mix butter with liquid, sugar and flavoring, and there are dozens of other ways of making the sweet, chilled stuff. But we haven t tasted real ice cream since the days when it was a Sunday morning ritual to skim the top off the contents of half a dozen milk cans, mix it with a rich custard like concoction which only mothers knew and turned it in a freezer half a day.