How was ice-cream made before refrigerators were invented?
See Also
We Made Homemade Ice Cream In A Bag, And We've Lost All ChillWhat Is Ice Cream?8 Must-Read Tips for Making Homemade Ice Cream- THERE IS a good summary in The National Trust Book of Sorbets, Flummeries and Fools by Colin Cooper English (published 1985). Time-consuming and costly, the old-fashioned way was to place the ingredients into a thin drum, which was then sunk into a larger container which held a mixture of ice and salt. Although water freezes at 32F (0C), milk and cream will not freeze until they are down to 20F (-6.7C). The salt melts the ice and produces a brine with a temperature around 17F (-8.3C), and it is this freezing brine which provides the refrigeration. The effort needed to produce a serving of ice-cream in an early Victorian household can be seen in this 1856 recipe: 'Break a pail of ice in pieces, add four pounds of salt and mix well; put a pewter freezing-can in an empty pail and surround it with ice; put the pudding ... into the can, and turn it very rapidly with the finger and thumb; when the pudding adheres to the sides of the can, scrape off with a spattle or spoon. When the pudding has become stiff, put it into a mould, cover it up with a lid, having put two plies of paper between; bury the mould in the ice; when wanted, take a basin of cold water and wash off the salt, take off the cover, turn it out on a dish and serve.' All this assumes that you have a handy supply of ice. Those who could afford it had ice-cellars or ice-houses built underground, in which ice from the winter could be kept, insulated by the air trapped in a layer of straw, reeds, chaff or bundles of thin wood fa*ggots throughout the rest of the year. The idea seems to have been used first by the Chinese. At the time of Confucius (500 BC) there were accounts of ice-cellars. Alexander the Great is said to have employed slaves in relays to carry snow and ice down from the mountains. The ice-cream recipe was brought back to Venice from China by Marco Polo in 1292. By the mid-19th century a number of freezing mixtures had been devised, which did not require snow or ice to start them off. They included such lethal co*cktails as a mixture of sal ammoniac, nitre and water, said to reduce the temperature from 50F to 10F; nitrate of ammonia and water (50F down to 4F); and sulphate of soda with dilute sulphuric acid (50F down to 3F).
Michael Whitley, Whitstable, Kent.
