Eat Drink
Sales hit “GDR soft ice cream”: childhood memories to lick
GDR soft ice cream remains a bestseller. photo
© Hendrik Schmidt/dpa
If you are traveling in the east, you will always come across ice cream parlors that sell “Original GDR soft ice cream”. The ice cream classic not only seems indestructible, it has also found fans elsewhere.
For Steffen Pretzsch, these words turned out to be a source of revenue. Since two noticeboards at his café at the venerable Naumburg Cathedral have announced that he is “Original DDR-Softeis” sold, his ice cream sales have doubled, says the 56-year-old.
“I wouldn’t have thought that possible.” Pretzsch is not the only seller of GDR soft ice cream, many ice cream parlors between Rügen and the Ore Mountains advertise the cool treat. But what is that supposed to be, GDR soft ice cream, why does it still sell so well?
First of all, GDR soft ice cream is not a protected regional brand like the Thuringian bratwurst, says Torsten Langbein. He is head of sales at Ablig Feinfrost, which owns the Central German Ice Cream Museum in Heichelheim (Thuringia). “Anyone can hang up a flag and announce that they sell GDR soft ice cream.” Nevertheless, there is something like a general understanding, a “learned taste” that many people associate with the fairly quickly melting ice cream – and still like it.
Soft ice cream is not an invention of the GDR
A first big secret behind the GDR soft ice cream are the ice cream machines. A single manufacturer, VEB Kältetechnik Niedersachswerfen, produced soft ice cream machines, the “Ilka Eisfreezer”, in the GDR. “In the west, it was pump machines that whipped up to 30 percent air into the ice cream. In the east, there was a lack of air,” says café owner Pretzsch. Less air in the soft serve means it’s a little firmer. The “mouth feel” will be different.
In fact, the old machines are still in use in a number of ice cream shops. Ulrike Helbig (56) has three machines from the 1980s in her “ice cream factory” in Gößnitz, Thuringia. Two produce their “Original DDR-Softeis”, one serves as a spare parts dispenser. Helbig started making soft ice cream in 2015 alongside her main job in nursing. “I started it as a second leg and didn’t know it was going so well.” Since 2018, all her attention has been on the ice.
However, soft ice cream is absolutely not an invention of the GDR. The idea for this came from the USA and was imported to Germany in the 1950s. According to information from the Consumer Protection Office of Lower Saxony, soft ice cream is produced at significantly higher temperatures (-6 degrees) than conventional ice cream (-18 degrees). A liquid ice cream mix – often made up of powder and water – is cooled in the machines and filled into the ice cream cones as soft ice cream in its characteristic shape.
Creamy, refreshing and sweet
The ice powder is a second answer to the question of what makes DDR soft ice cream. Ice cream manufacturer Helbig buys her soft ice cream mixtures from different manufacturers, as she says. Café owner Pretzsch, on the other hand, relies on a producer who already supplied soft ice cream powder in the GDR era: the Komet company from Großpostwitz in Upper Lusatia. It has to be “classic” chocolate and vanilla – and mixed with water “so that it tastes like it used to,” says Pretzsch. The ice cream is “not so creamy, more refreshing, not so sweet”.
In Großpostwitz, sales manager Sebastian Bartsch doesn’t want to hold the GDR theme too high. “The genus “GDR soft ice cream” does not exist in food law,” he says. Komet developed its soft ice cream mix in the 1950s and 1960s. “But it would be dubious to say: We’re selling the same things as before,” says Bartsch. Nowadays you can fall back on completely different raw materials, and the regulations are completely different for other additives such as flavors and colorings.
Nevertheless, the following applies: “The basic idea of the ice cream is the same as in GDR times. But whether it tastes exactly the same – there’s a lot going on in your head,” says Bartsch. Komet has long since sold its ice powder not only in the east. “We notice that we are increasingly selling to West Germany,” says the head of sales. The ice cream mixes have also gone to retailers in Austria and even Italy. “Of course we’re pleased that we can score points there with our soft ice cream.”
“Flavour from childhood” is in demand
A second major manufacturer, the Anona company in Colditz, Saxony, is also observing this trend. “In the west, interested parties are gradually emerging who want to include the traditional soft ice cream product in their portfolio,” the company reports. The Colditzers produce around 1000 tons of ice powder every year. Her recipe for the Original Chocolate and Vanilla varieties was developed in 1970. Basically, not much has changed to this day, the basic raw materials have been retained. The “taste from childhood” is simply still in demand in the East.
But what do customers actually say about GDR soft ice cream? A company outing made up of law firms and tax consultants stopped in front of Steffen Pretzsch’s Domcafé. A woman devoutly licks her ice cream and says: “Yes, yes, I would say that it tastes like before.”
A colleague vehemently disagrees. In the GDR, soft ice cream was much creamier, he says. Pretzsch has an explanation for this. Even in the GDR, soft ice cream was not always soft ice cream: “Some even mixed it with milk. Then, of course, it tasted different.”