Here’s one aspect of Margaret Thatcher’s legacy we can all feel unequivocally good about: The Iron Lady, better known for her “bruising political style and free-market views,” helped invent soft-serve ice cream as a chemist in the late 1940s.
According to a 1983 article in the New Scientist, Thatcher originally trained as a chemist and worked on a research team for food manufacturer J. Lyons & Co., looking for ways to stabilize a cheaper, airier ice cream. So, partly thanks to Thatcher, your ice cream is now less dense and arguably less delicious. But, to quote British ice cream truck franchise Mr. Whippy, her work also “made possible the soft ice-cream machine,” beloved by sweet tooths across the political spectrum. . .