Whence
Slushie (frozen fizzy drink)
Drink

Where does Slushie (frozen fizzy drink) come from?

The fizzy slushie comes from Coffeyville, Kansas. In 1958 the soda machine at Omar Knedlik's ice-cream shop broke down, so he kept bottled soda in the freezer instead, and the half-frozen drinks turned out to be a hit.

A broken machine and a freezer

Knedlik, a farm boy from Barnes, Kansas, bought his first ice-cream shop after serving in the Second World War. By the late 1950s he ran one in Coffeyville, where his soda machine kept giving trouble. When it failed in 1958, he stored the bottled soda in the freezer to keep it cold. Opened, the chilled bottles turned to slush. Customers loved it, and Knedlik set out to build a machine that could make the same frozen fizz.

Turning an accident into a machine

His patent application, filed in July 1958, explains the trick. The carbonated drink is chilled in a closed chamber to its freezing point or below, while gas pressure and vigorous stirring keep it liquid. Poured into an open cup, part of it freezes at once into fine crystals as the pressure drops. With a Dallas company he built the first machines, the earliest from a car air-conditioning unit, and by the mid-1960s about 300 had been made.

Why people think of Italy

Italy has a frozen treat that looks similar: granita, which comes from Sicily. It is made from sugar syrup flavoured with lemon, coffee or fruit juice and stirred while it freezes, so that it becomes a soft mass of tiny ice crystals. A slushie is closer to a drink, with a more liquid texture, and Knedlik's machine was the first to make it fizzy: a carbonated drink held at the edge of freezing until the moment it is served.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org › Slush (beverage) ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › The Icee Company ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › Omar Knedlik ↗ · patents.google.com ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › Granita ↗

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