One of America's Favorites - Milkshakes

A strawberry milkshake topped with whipped cream and strawberry syrup

A milkshake is a sweet, cold beverage which is usually made from milk, ice cream or iced milk, and flavorings or sweeteners such as fruit syrup or chocolate sauce. Outside the United States, the drink is sometimes called a thick shake or a thick milkshake or in New England, a frappe, to differentiate it from other less-viscous forms of flavored milk.
Full-service restaurants, soda fountains, and diners usually prepare and mix the shake "by hand" from scoops of ice cream and milk in a blender or drink mixer using a stainless steel cup. Many fast food outlets do not make shakes by hand with ice cream. Instead, they make shakes in automatic milkshake machines which freeze and serve a premade milkshake mixture consisting of milk, a sweetened flavoring agent, and a thickening agent. However, some fast food outlets still follow the traditional method, and some serve milkshakes which are prepared by blending soft-serve ice cream (or ice milk) with flavoring or syrups. A milkshake can also be made by adding powder into fresh milk, and stirring the powder into the milk. Milkshakes made in this way can come in a variety of flavors, including chocolate, strawberry and banana.






Hand-blended milkshakes can be made from any flavor of ice cream, and additional flavorings, such as chocolate syrup and/or malt syrup or malt powder, can be added prior to mixing. This allows a greater variety than is available in machine-made shakes. Some unusual milkshake recipes exclude ice cream.
Milkshake-like recipes which use yogurt, crushed ice, and fresh fruit and which are made without ice cream are usually called smoothies. When malted milk is added, a milkshake is called a malted milkshake, a malt shake (or maltshake), a malted, or simply a malt. Milkshakes are also called thick milkshakes in the United Kingdom, a frappe (pronounced "frap") in parts of New England and Canada. In Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts, coffee syrup or coffee-flavored ice cream is used to make the local "coffee frappe" shake. Milkshakes with added fruit called batido are popular in Latin America and in Miami's Cuban expatriate community. In Nicaragua, milkshakes are called leche malteada.
Some U.S. restaurants serve milkshakes with crumbled cookies, candy bar pieces, or alcoholic beverages. The grasshopper milkshake, for example, includes crumbled chocolate cookies, creme de menthe liqueur, and chocolate mint ice cream.






Restaurants with the highest volume of traffic, such as McDonald's, often opt to use pre-made milkshake mixtures that are prepared in automatic milkshake machines. These machines are stainless steel cylinders with beaters that use refrigeration coils to freeze pre-made milkshake mixtures into a drinkable texture. The number of different flavors that restaurants with automatic milkshake machines can serve is limited by the number of different tanks in their milkshake machines, and fast food restaurants usually offer fewer flavors of milkshakes.
The smallest automatic milkshake machines are counter-mounted appliances that can make a single milkshake flavor using a five liter stainless steel tank. Large restaurants that wish to offer multiple flavors can either use floor-mounted multi-flavor machines with multiple five liter stainless steel barrels or use carbon dioxide-based machines that mix the flavors during dispensing. Some fast-food restaurants use "thick milkshake" machines, which are single-flavor machines with a (12 liter) stainless steel tank.






Some fast-food restaurants such as Dairy Queen serve milkshakes which are prepared by blending soft-serve ice cream (or ice milk) with sweetened, flavored syrups such as chocolate syrup and fruit-flavored syrup and milk.






Pre-made milkshakes are sold in grocery stores in North America and the UK. These drinks are made from milk mixed with sweetened flavored powder, artificial syrup or concentrate, which would otherwise be called "flavored milk", thickened with carrageenan or other products. Bottled milkshakes are usually sold in 330ml, 500ml or 1 liter bottles.






When the term "milkshake" was first used in print in 1885, milkshakes were an alcoholic whiskey drink that has been described as a "sturdy, healthful eggnog type of drink, with eggs, whiskey, etc., served as a tonic as well as a treat". However, by 1900, the term referred to "wholesome drinks made with chocolate, strawberry, or vanilla syrups." By the "early 1900s people were asking for the new treat, often with ice cream." By the 1930s, milkshakes were a popular drink at malt shops, which were the "typical soda fountain of the period... used by students as a meeting place or hangout."
The history of the electric blender, malted milk drinks and milkshakes are interconnected. Before the widespread availability of electric blenders, milkshake-type drinks were more like eggnog, or they were a hand-shaken mixture of crushed ice and milk, sugar, and flavorings. Hamilton Beach's drink mixers began being used at soda fountains in 1911 and the electric blender or drink mixer was invented by Steven Poplawski in 1922. With the invention of the blender, milkshakes began to take their modern, whipped, aerated, and frothy form. Malted milk drinks are made with malted milk powder, which contains dried milk, malted barley and wheat flour. Malted milk powder was invented in 1897 by William Horlick as an easily digested restorative health drink for disabled people and children, and as an infant's food.
The use of malted milk powder in milkshakes was popularized in the USA by the Chicago drugstore chain Walgreens. In 1922, Walgreens' employee Ivar "Pop" Coulson made a milkshake by adding two scoops of vanilla ice cream to the standard malted milk drink recipe (milk, chocolate syrup and malt powder). This item, under the name "Horlick's Malted Milk," was featured by the Walgreen drugstore chain as part of a chocolate milk shake, which itself became known as a "malted" or "malt" and became one of the most popular soda-fountain drinks.
The automation of milkshakes developed in the 1930s, after the invention of freon-cooled refrigerators provided a safe, reliable way of automatically making and dispensing ice cream. In 1936, inventor Earl Prince used the basic concept behind the freon-cooled automated ice cream machine to develop the Multimixer, a "five-spindled mixer that could produce five milkshakes at once, all automatically, and dispense them at the pull of a lever into awaiting paper cups."
In the late 1930s, several newspaper articles show that the term "frosted" was used to refer to milkshakes made with ice cream. In 1937, the Denton Journal in Maryland stated that "For a 'frosted' shake, add a dash of your favorite ice cream." In 1939, the Mansfield News in Ohio stated that "A frosted beverage, in the vernacular, is something good to which ice cream has been added. Example par excellence is frosted coffee—that hot, tasty beverage made chilly with ice and frosty with ice cream."

A soda jerker throws a scoop of ice cream into a steel mixing cup 

By the 1950s, popular places to drink milkshakes were Woolworth's "5 & 10" lunch counters, diners, burger joints, and drugstore soda fountains. These establishments often prominently displayed a shining chrome or stainless steel milkshake mixing machine.
These establishments made milkshakes in Hamilton Beach or similar styles of drink mixers, which had spindles and agitators that folded air into the drinks for "smooth, fluffy results" and served them in 12½-ounce tall, "y"-shaped glasses. Soda fountain staff had their own jargon, such as "Burn One All the Way" (chocolate malted with chocolate ice cream), "Twist It, Choke It, and Make It Cackle" (chocolate malted with an egg) "Shake One in the Hay" (a strawberry shake) and a "White Cow" (a vanilla milkshake). In the 1950s, a milkshake machine salesman named Ray Kroc bought exclusive rights to the 1930s-era Multimixer milkshake maker from inventor Earl Prince, and went on to use automated milkshake machines to speed up production at McDonald's restaurants.






In the 1950s, milkshakes were called "frappes", "velvets," "frosted [drinks]", or "cabinets" in different parts of the U.S. A specialty style of milkshake, the "concrete," was "...a milk shake so thick that the server hands it out the order window upside down, demonstrating that not a drop will drip." In 1952, the Newport Daily News in Rhode Island contained a "Guide For Top Quality ICE CREAM SODAS CABINETS MILK SHAKES", which shows the use of the term "cabinet" in print. An article from 1953 in the Salisbury Times (in the state of Maryland) suggests that shakes can be made in a jar by shaking well. The article states that by adding four large tablespoons of ice cream, the drink becomes a "frosted shake." Currently, in New England, and especially the Greater Boston area, the ice-cream and milk dessert known as a "milkshake" in other parts of the country is referred to as a "frappe". In these locales, "milkshake" refers to a lighter drink, usually made of shaken or blended milk with flavoring of some sort. The term "milkshake," however, is widely used in Connecticut.

This milkshake was made using liquid nitrogen. 

In 2005, the traditional home of the milkshake, the family restaurants and 24-hour diner-style restaurants that were the "staples of 1950s and 60s America such as Denny's, Big Boy and the International House of Pancakes" were supplanted "...in terms of revenue for the first time since the U.S. census started measuring this in the 1970s. The shift means the burger, fries and milkshake ideal evoked by the sitcom Happy Days is losing its hold on the American appetite." Instead, U.S. consumers are going out to casual dining restaurants.
In 2006, the U.S. Agricultural Research Service developed reduced-sugar, low-fat milk shakes for lunch programs. The shakes have half the sugar and only 10% of the fat of commercial fast-food shakes. Schools need a milk shake machine or soft-serve ice cream machine to serve the milkshakes. The milkshakes also have added fiber and other nutrients, and they have much less lactose, which makes the shakes appropriate for some lactose intolerant people.
The U.S. sales of milkshakes, malts and floats rose 11% in 2006, according to the industry research firm NPD Group. Christopher Muller, the director of the Center for Multi-Unit Restaurant Management at Orlando's University of Central Florida states that "milkshakes remind us of summer, youth — and indulgence", and "they're evocative of a time gone by". Muller states that milkshakes are an "enormously profitable" item for restaurants, since the fluffy drinks contain so much air. The market research firm Technomic claims that about 75% of the average-priced $3.38 restaurant shake in 2006 was profit. An executive from Sonic Drive-In, a U.S. chain of 1950s-style diner restaurants, calls shakes "...one of our highest-volume, revenue-producing areas".
Part of the increase in milkshake sales reported in 2006 may be due to the increasing availability of innovative chef-designed milkshakes in high-end restaurants. In 2006, the Los Angeles Times reported that chefs from "hipster hangouts and retro landmarks" are using "macerated farmers market strawberries, Valrhona chocolate and Madagascar Bourbon vanilla" to make new milkshake flavors.
Other novel ideas offered in LA-area restaurants include milkshakes made with toasted pecans, saffron-rose water or orange-blossom ice cream, taro root, vanilla beans steeped in rum, Valrhona chocolate and Grey Goose vodka, and vanilla custard mixed with Russian Imperial stout.