Was Margaret Thatcher really part of team that invented Mr Whippy?
撒切尔夫人真的是甜筒冰淇淋研发团队成员吗？

Very little connected to Margaret Thatcher's legacy comes without an argument.
撒切尔夫人过世，对于她给英国人民留下的宝贵遗产总是争议很大。

The claim by the bishop of London in his funeral address that the former scientist was "part of the team that invented Mr Whippy ice-cream" is no exception.
而伦敦主教在其葬礼悼词中关于撒切尔夫人是“发明甜筒冰淇淋的团队成员”的说法，也毫不例外引起了争议。撒切尔夫人在从政前从事科学研究的工作。

The New Scientist reported in July 1983, as Thatcher was elected a fellow of the Royal Society body of scientists, that she had worked "developing emulsifiers for ice-creams for Joe Lyons from 1949-51".
《新科学家》杂志于1983年7月报道称，撒切尔夫人当选为英国皇家学会的成员，而且她曾“于1949年至1951年间，为乔利昂工作开发冰淇淋中的乳化剂”。

The Washington Post, in the wake of her death last week, claimed she "helped invent ice-cream as we know it", adding that her efforts as part of the Lyons team to create a cheap, airy ice-cream were "one aspect of Margaret Thatcher's legacy we can all feel unequivocally good about".
《华盛顿邮报》上周在撒切尔夫人离世后，声称她“帮助发明我们知道的冰淇淋”，补充说到她为利昂团队制作便宜轻便的冰淇淋所做出的努力，是“我们确切知道的玛格丽特-撒切尔遗产的一部分”。

It is, though, as the New Yorker has it, a "frozen-dessert origin myth".
不过《纽约客》称这个关于“冰冻甜点的起源”的说法完全是虚构的。

Mr-Whippy-style soft-serve ice-cream originated in the US about a decade before Thatcher worked at J Lyons, it reports. When soft-serve arrived in the UK, J Lyons was indeed at the forefront – but it had teamed up with the US ice-cream behemoth Mister Softee and operated franchises under that name.
根据《纽约客》的报道，早在撒切尔夫人投身乔利昂团队的10年前，Mr Whippy式软冰淇淋就已经在美国诞生了，不过乔利昂确实将软冰淇淋引入英国——该团队与美国冰淇淋巨头Mister Softee 合作，并获得其特许经营权。

Thatcher was a food research scientist at J Lyons but, as a Royal Society article noted in May 2011, the details of her work there are sketchy. She reportedly worked on the quality of cake and pie fillings as well as ice-cream, and researched saponification (soap-making).
皇家学会于2011年5月发布文章指出，撒切尔夫人是乔利昂的食品研究科学家，但文中对她的工作的描写却非常粗浅。据称，她主要从事于改进蛋糕质量、饼馅和冰淇淋，以及皂化反应（制皂）的工作。

The article reports: "An oft-told anecdote in British left circles associates Thatcher with the invention of soft ice-cream, which added air, lowered quality and raised profits. Lyons certainly worked on this new product, but there is no firm evidence that Thatcher directly assisted in its invention."
那篇文章称：“英国左翼势力将撒切尔夫人与软冰淇淋发明联系在一起。软冰淇淋中添加了空气、降低了品质而且提升了利润。利昂确实从事于这个项目的开发，但是没有确凿证据表明撒切尔夫人直接参与了发明。”

Incidentally, Thatcher didn't invent the Cadbury Flake either.
顺便说一下，撒切尔夫人也没有发明吉百利片。