I'm curious how they got the raw material to them. You can't make 5 tons of ice cream a day out of thin air. Were they shipped premixed sugar & milk or did they get straight raw ingredients and mix them onsite? I feel like the refrigeration capabilities are a pretty small part of the supply chain required to actually produce ice cream. Did they get a floating milk tanker to stop by every few days? Were they loaded on shore and just made do with what they had until the next port call?

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cameron_b 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Spray-dried whole milk especially, but also wartime dairy infrastructure in general on which powdered milk production depends, was a generation-defining nutritional element during that wartime period.

	▲	tadfisher an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The wartime infrastructure got so large that lawmakers feared a widespread economic collapse, and signed into law the National Dairy Council, the "strategic cheese reserve" (AKA "government cheese"), and requirements that dairy milk be served with all school lunches. It's one of the most subsidized and most health-damaging industries there is.