What is Yum Yum?
It isn't water ice. It isn't ice cream. Leo's Famous Yum Yum is its own thing: a little smoother and creamier than water ice (the secret is a touch of dairy), but lighter than gelato or ice cream. It's long been famous for its two-flavor "splits", cherry-pineapple, lime-vanilla, rainbow, and it's the one treat on this whole map that earns its own pink dot.
A Camden original (1936)
Yum Yum was created by Giovanni "John" Leo, born in Bari, Italy in 1896, who immigrated to the United States in 1913 and settled in South Camden, New Jersey. In 1936 he founded Leo's Manufacturing Company and began making the frozen dessert that would carry his name, a creamier answer to the plain water ice his competitors sold.
Barrels, ice, and salt
Before freezers were everywhere, Yum Yum reached its fans the hard way: packed into twenty-quart metal cans, nestled inside wooden barrels surrounded by ice and rock salt, delivered daily, and good for about fourteen hours on ice as street vendors sold it cup by cup from pushcarts and wagons across the city.
The taste of South Jersey summers
By the 1950s, by many accounts, Yum Yum was the go-to frozen dessert across Camden and South Jersey, the default summer treat for a generation. It faded from that mid-century peak over the decades that followed, but for a lot of South Jersey families "Yum Yum" still means childhood.
Still going today
Giovanni's descendants kept the recipe alive as Leo's Ice Cream Company. You can still get the real thing at their South Jersey shops, listed below.
Where to get Yum Yum
Know a stand that serves Leo's Yum Yum that we're missing? Tell us → Sources: leosicecream.net, Camden County Historical Society, The Philadelphia Inquirer.