The History of Ice Cream and Sorbet

Ice cream is a popular dessert loved all over the world. But did you know that the history of ice cream goes all the way back to ancient China? Ice cream is a delicious cold dessert that can be enjoyed on its own or together with other elements of the dessert kitchen, creating wonderful flavour combinations, contrasts in taste, and a play of temperatures and textures that together make a great dessert.

Ice was discovered in China around 4,000 years ago. Back then it was not a dessert, but more a kind of iced drink that was popular among wealthy people. These iced drinks were made from snow, which was gathered by couriers from the northern mountains. Ingredients such as honey, fruit and alcohol were often added to the drink to improve its flavour. This was, of course, a very early version of what we today call sorbet.

Historical accounts show us that Alexander the Great, and later the Greeks and the Romans too, used ice from the mountains to chill their drinks, for example. In the early Roman Empire, Emperor Nero was also known to be very fond of fruit drinks mixed with honey and snow.

However, it is said that it was not until around the year 1290, when Marco Polo returned from China with recipes for flavourful ices, some of them even including milk, that we truly began to take the first tentative steps towards what we know today as modern ice cream.

It can be hard to pinpoint exactly when people began to include dairy products in frozen desserts such as ice cream. Some believe that this approach first emerged in Asia and was introduced to Europe by Marco Polo, while others stubbornly insist that this is a myth.

To incorporate milk and cream into ice cream and other frozen desserts, cooks used an endothermic process. The ingredients were placed in a metal container, which was then set in a bucket filled with ice and salt. Salt lowers the freezing point of ice, which then absorbs energy in order to melt. In this way, the ice in the bucket would "draw" heat from the mixture, which would then freeze and turn into a firmer mass. The earliest evidence we have that this method was used dates from 1550, when a Spanish doctor used the technique. The locals, and the newspapers, described the technique as "Natural Magic".

The doctor who first used the process said of his work that, since the first thing people want at parties is to drink wine as cold as ice, especially in summer, he would teach them not only to chill their wine, but to freeze it, so that it could only be sipped. With this method of making frozen wine, the method of making sorbet was introduced as well, and the first book on making sorbet was published in Italy in 1690.

The first European ice creams are believed to originate from Italy at about the same time as sorbet emerged. The recipes quickly spread from Italy to other European countries and England, where the term "ice cream" of course also comes from.

For many years, ice cream, unlike sorbet, was very demanding to make and required many man-hours. You still had to obtain ice and snow for the freezing process, and at the same time the mixture of milk, cream and added flavour had to be stirred by hand for hours as it froze, all in order to create a creamy consistency. Because of the large amount of manual work required to make ice cream, it was also an expensive product. As a result, it was not something many people could afford.

In the 1700s, sorbet grew in popularity in large European cities, where the growing middle class began to enjoy the dessert in local shops. The earliest book devoted entirely to the making of ice cream was published in 1768 and was titled, in translation, "True principles of freezing refreshments".

The USA is where ice cream and sorbet finally became available to the masses at an affordable price. Here, a New Yorker, Nancy M. Johnson, invented an ice cream machine that significantly reduced the production time for ice cream. American companies built on and improved her designs. They simplified production and reduced its costs. In 1851, a milkman from Baltimore, Maryland, named Jacob Fussell started the first ice cream factories, and thus helped make the products even more accessible. The popularity of ice cream then exploded after the Civil War.

Although ice cream might seem impossible without modern cooling and freezing facilities, there were alternative solutions. The early versions of ice cream were in fact largely made possible by harvesting snow and ice from mountains and frozen lakes, which were well insulated before transport to reduce melting. When the ice and snow arrived in the cities, it was stored in so-called ice houses. These ice houses had deep pits inside, free from any light and heat, and were thus well insulated to keep the warmth out. Obtaining ice and snow was very manual and required a great deal of labour. It was therefore a very valuable commodity, and buying ice was reserved for the rich and the nobility.

The earliest freezers were invented in the mid to late 1800s, which made the production and storage of ice easier, but they were not necessarily efficient, and the gases and coolants in the early models proved to be toxic. Several different gases and liquids were tried, and it was not until Freon was found and used in freezers that they became more widespread. Today a gas called tetrafluoroethane is used, as it is not toxic. Since the freezer was invented more than 100 years ago, it has developed a great deal, going from being an absolute luxury that almost only industry could afford to becoming more common in private homes after World War II. This made ice cream even more accessible, as it became much easier to store ice cream at home.