"like pickles and ice cream" (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Mullins, Bill AMRDEC]

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE


>  A 1968 ex. refers to the craving during pregnancy as "time-honored,"
but GB
> reveals *nothing* relevant before 1967 in a search for "pickles and
ice
> cream" + "expecting" [or "expectant"/"pregnant"/"pregnancy"].  It does
find
> an unmistakable ex. of the less euphonious "ice cream and pickles"
from
> Doris Lessing in "1952" (though WorldCat suggests "1954").
>
> What we know: "pickles and ice cream" seems to have entered pop
culture as a
> sign of pregnancy no earlier than the 1950s.

Earliest useful cite I see is 1944.  Most prior collocations of pickles
and ice cream are:
1.  a comparison to some pair which is self-evidently incompatible
(usually in articles about sports, it seems);
2.  a reference to a meal which would cause stomach aches or bad dreams
(a la Welsh Rarebit); and
3.  straightforward lists of dishes served (at picnics, school lunches,
etc.) with no indication that there is anything wrong with serving the
two foods together.

I'd think one of the reasons that cites before the late 1950s are so
rare is the taboo of discussing pregnancy; not that it wasn't understood
that pregnant women didn't have cravings for odd foods.


_Augusta [GA] Chronicle_ 5/7/1944 p 15 col 4 [quoting Gracie Allen;
GeneaologyBank]
"During a political year, a man resembles in many ways nothing so much
as a woman who is going to have a baby.  He is nervous, irritable, bites
his nails, and can often be found eating strange combinations like
pickles and ice cream."


_Cedar Rapids [IA] Gazette_ 5/25/1950 p 14 col 3 [UP article;
Newspaperarchive]
"Dill pickles and ice cream at midnight? Watermelon and soda crackers at
4 a.m.?  Expectant mothers used to order these strange combinations in
the middle of the night."

Ed McBain _The 87th Precinct_ NY:  Simon and Schuster, 1959. p 180
[Google Books]
"Look, Bert, when a woman is carrying, she gets goofy ideas.  Pickles
and ice cream, you know?"

Lloyd Alexander _Janine is French_  NY: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1959. [Google
Books]
"I would have been undisturbed had Janine followed the traditional
pattern of waking in the middle of the night with an intense yearning
for pickles and ice cream."


Zanesville, OH _Times Recorder_ 12/13/1963 p 15 col 2 [syndicated Earl
Wilson column; Newspaperarchive]
"Jack Carter and his beautiful wife Paul Stewart - who were at that Jule
Styne party - said:  "If my wife gets sharp hunger pains about 5 o'clock
in the morning, and sends me out for pickles and ice cream, it doesn't
mean what it usually does under such circumstances.
"It just means there's a restaurant strike and she didn't get any
dinner." "


Uniontown PA _Evening Standard_ 3/20/1964 p 19 col 4
[In an advice column, bylined by Dorothy Dix, but signed by Dr. Joyce
Brothers, about how men react to pregnancies. Newspaperarchive]
"Poised uncomfortably on the edge of a chair, he'll be ready to leap to
his feet, and run to fetch anything from a glass of water to pickles and
ice cream."


Pasadena CA _Star-News_ 5/17/1966 p 25 col 6 [AP article,
Newspaperarchive]
"Tuesday Weld and husband Claude Harz have been borrowing movies from
the Walt Disney Library to run off at their home in Malibu Beach.
Watching "Pinocchio" and the like, explains Tuesday, results in
"vibrations" which are good for an expectant mother. Anyway, it must be
better than pickles and ice cream."


_Lewiston [ME] Evening Journal_ 2/3/1967 p 16 col 5 [AP article, Google
News Archive]
"Most expectant mothers eat things like pickles and ice cream, but
there's one mother-to-be in Boston that prefers to eat tree bark and hum
a lot."

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org