Ice Cream and Ices

Ice cream’s origins go back to the sixteenth century, when Italian scientists discovered they could intensify the natural coldness of ice by mixing it with salt. Inspired by these scientists, confectioners experimented with freezing drinks and cream desserts and created the first ices and ice creams. Freezing was fraught with difficulty in an era that lacked refrigeration. The earliest printed recipes listed quantities of snow or ice and salt among the ingredients, and they included more detail about freezing than they did about creating the ice or ice cream mixture. In fact, some recipes called for the cook to use an existing drink or cream recipe, and then follow freezing instructions. After making the drink or cream mixture, the cooks poured it into a covered pot called a sorbetière. Next they mixed ice or snow with the correct proportion of salt in a large pail. They put the covered sorbetière into the ice-and-salt–filled pail and banked the ice up around it to begin the freezing process. Cooks soon learned that to make smooth ice cream, they had to stir the mixture frequently while it was freezing. So from time to time they took the sorbetière out of the pail, opened it, and stirred the mixture thoroughly. Then they put the cover back on and put it back in the pail. They had to turn or shake the closed sorbetière while it was in the ice mixture, and they needed to drain the freezing pot as the ice melted. It was cold, hard, time-consuming work.