La King’s Confectionery in Galveston is the only place in the world you can get Purity Ice Cream. A dish or cone of the guilty pleasure has a velvety texture and creamy flavor that places it among the best of frozen treats.
Don’t confuse this Purity Ice Cream with the concoction from Tennessee or New York. This frozen confection is pure Texan.
Augustus Jackson, an African-American former White House chef, is credited with making ice cream popular when he began producing it in Philadelphia, Pa., in 1832. Large-scale ice creameries came about in 1851 with mechanical refrigeration. Ice cream on an industrial scale arrived in Texas in 1889 when the Purity Ice Cream Company opened in Galveston. (Blue Bell Ice Cream traces its roots back to 1911.)
Purity was about the only ice cream you could buy on the island until the death of the company’s owner, G.B. Bryston, in 1979. Once popular in all of Galveston’s drug stores and illegal casinos, Purity Ice Cream faded faster than the company’s rusted neon signs.
The brand was revived in 1983 when La King’s Confectionery bought the equipment and recipes. The small factory makes only enough of the 36 flavors for La King’s ice cream parlor.
The King family has a candy-making history that goes back to the 1920s. The current confectionery originated in 1976, when Jack King took his father’s candy recipes and recreated a 1920s soda and candy shop on the Strand. The sweet shop is so much more than your usual hospitality suite. Although the company caters to vacationers, it produces most of its own candies (try the dark chocolate almond bark), salt water taffy, and Purity Ice Cream. It’s an artisan confectionery disguised as a tourist trap that’s legendary with the locals.
La King’s Confectionery is at 2323 Strand in Galveston. The old-fashioned soda fountain and candy shop is open daily from 10am to 6pm, Sunday-Friday; 10am-9pm, Saturdays, or until the crowds go home.
1,084th in a series. Collect them all. Day Trips, Vol. 2, a book of “Day Trips,” is available for $8.95, plus $3.05 for shipping, handling, and tax. Mail to: Day Trips, PO Box 33284, South Austin, TX 78704.
This article appears in May 4 • 2012.
