By Mary Tutwiler

Summer in the South is synonymous with sweat, swimming and the best tongue-numbing rush in town—snowballs (also known as sno-balls or snow-cones).

I recently polled a panel of local experts who have vast experience and strong opinions about what constitutes a perfect snowball. The taste team consists of Marcy, Isabelle, Edward, Eleanor, Michael, Katie and Thomas—all the kids in the neighborhood except 7-year-old Emily, who tends to identify flavors by “red” or “blue”.

Snowballs are the American South’s way of chillin’ through summer. The general recipe is pretty simple, shiver a ball of shaved ice into a cup and dump syrup over it. But that recipe is about the same as Aunt Ida the biscuit queen telling you she just mixes up some flour and lard and water to make her flaky perfections. There are as many varieties of snowballs as there are kids and adults who like ‘em, so we had to set some standards.

My coterie of connoisseurs compiled a few criteria while sitting on the stoop, swapping tastes. The most important element in a good snowball, they decided, is the ice. Bad snowballs have lumpy balls of uneven ice that doesn’t absorb flavor well and freeze fillings. Good ice, we agreed, is shaved fine as snow, as addictive a powder as the deep pillows of the new fallen stuff skiers dream of out West. They have Telluride. We have Pearl’s.

Pearl’s on Main Street in St. Martinville has been in operation for 47 years. They are on their third ice machine, according to third generation snowball maker Ed Robertson.

“When we first opened, we used to scrape a big 300 pound block of ice by hand,” he explained. “My grandfather went to New Orleans and saw an ice machine, then he came home and copied it. That got us out of scraping.”

Today they use a model that creates a flurry of ice flakes preferred by discriminating snowball fanciers.

Clara Romero of St. Martinville has been a patron of Pearl’s for all of its 47 years. She understands the concept of Louisiana’s juxtapositions.

“Every day after we pulled [picked] peppers we’d stop here. We needed to,” she said shaking her fingers and laughing.

Customer Alton Broussard rates Pearl’s as number one on his snowball scale.

“Even grown-ups need to keep cool,” he said, sipping on a half Hawaiian Punch, half Almond.

After ice, the number two, and only other criteria, is flavor. William’s Snowballs on Plum Street in New Orleans is the place to go for a taste factor beyond “red” or “blue.” In the chilly business for 58 years, William’s has developed a long catalogue of regular flavors; but go for the big ones, the cream flavors which modulate the sugar (a little) and make a snowball into something both light and unctuous.

Stoop delegation favorites include Blueberries and Cream, Mocha, Iced Coffee, Chocolate, Orchid Cream Vanilla, and Dreamsicle. Donna Black, who laid down cold cash for the syrup secrets from Mr. Williams, has, in her 21 years added only one innovation—dollops of condensed milk. For an extra 50 cents, she’ll drift the sweet creamy goo over a flavor of your choice.

Snowy concoctions have been around a long time. The Persians kept their overheated harems happy with sherbet, an icy drink, flavored by the heady perfume of damask roses. Culinary mythology, according to the English food writer Elizabeth David, espouses that water ices, as well as the better-documented spaghetti, came to the Italians via the Chinese. The Italians and French developed sherbet, or as it is called in France, sorbet, into a fruity frozen flurry that blasts the palate clean between the innumerable courses of the haute cuisine, or nips as a light refreshing desert for those concerned with their waistlines. And it was from Italy, again according to David, where the cold confection called granitas, a blizzard made of fresh fruit or coffee and sugar syrup, emigrated to the United States.

How refined flavors like lemon or coffee transmogrified into “Rocket 88″ or “Popeye,” both standards at snowball stands throughout the Sunbelt, says a lot about the difference in taste between those who choose the Backstreet Boys over Bellini. Back to Emily, age 7. Her favorite flavor is “Bubble Gum” or as she prefers to order it for herself, “blue.”

Filed Under: Food Talk