In North Carolina and later early 20th-century New York, the meal was not organized as starter-main-dessert but around a large table where everything was placed together: "the main" (the slow-cooked meat dish), "the relish" (the sweet-and-sour preserves that accompany it), "the cooler" (the iced drink served in a pitcher), "the sweet" (the dessert, often frozen at the Henrys'), and "the hand-food" (the portable bites taken on journeys). One served oneself, at will, in an indoor picnic atmosphere. The ice cream, freshly churned by hand, was the highlight of the gathering.

This is THE emblematic gesture of Beulah Henry: her very first patent, in 1912, was a vacuum ice cream freezer. A bucket of cream is surrounded by a mantle of crushed ice and rock salt, then you turn the crank until the cream sets. The salt melts the ice, lowering its temperature below zero — a delicious little physics lesson to which the young inventor devoted her youth.