How did ancient civilizations make ice cream? - Vivian Jiang — Transcript

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1. 0:07On a hot spring afternoon in 1963,
2. 0:10two men, sent by the American CIA,
3. 0:13snuck into the cafeteria of the Havana Libre Hotel.
4. 0:17Their directive was to retrieve a poison pill from the freezer
5. 0:20and slip it into the chocolate milkshake of Fidel Castro,
6. 0:23the Cuban leader who was known to devour up to 18 scoops of ice cream after lunch.
7. 0:29While exact details of the story are contested, it's rumored that the pill,
8. 0:33however, froze to the freezer coils and broke,
9. 0:37foiling the CIA’s plan and granting Castro many more days to satiate his sweet tooth.
10. 0:43Ice cream has held a unique role in our world’s history, culture, and cravings—
11. 0:48but where did it come from?
12. 0:51The first accounts of cold desserts and iced drinks date back
13. 0:54as early as the first century.
14. 0:57In civilizations including ancient Rome, Mughal India, and Tang dynasty China,
15. 1:02these icy treats were mainly enjoyed by the royal elites.
16. 1:06And finding the means to freeze these delicacies wasn’t always easy.
17. 1:11Wealthy Mediterranean nobility sent laborers to trek up high mountains
18. 1:15to harvest glacial ice and snow.
19. 1:17Meanwhile, ancient Persians built shallow insulated pools of water
20. 1:21and utilized a technique known as sky cooling.
21. 1:25At night, the shallow pools would naturally radiate heat
22. 1:28into the dry desert skies,
23. 1:30causing them to dip below the ambient temperature and freeze.
24. 1:35Yet the cream-based treat we know today made a much later debut.
25. 1:39It was originally inspired by sherbet, or sharbat in Arabic,
26. 1:44an icy drink believed to have originated in Persia,
27. 1:47and subsequently gained popularity in the Middle Ages.
28. 1:51European travelers brought sharbat recipes home,
29. 1:54and began creating their own chocolate, pinecone,
30. 1:58and even eggplant flavored takes on the refreshment.
31. 2:02In 1692, Antonio Latini, a Neapolitan chef,
32. 2:06recorded a recipe for a unique milk-based version,
33. 2:10which some historians dub the first ice cream.
34. 2:14In the 18th century, ice cream expanded its reach
35. 2:17as these recipes set sail alongside European settlers to North America.
36. 2:22Yet it was still mainly enjoyed by the upper classes
37. 2:25as the process to make it was quite laborious,
38. 2:28and its main ingredients— sugar, salt, and cream— were expensive.
39. 2:33George Washington is said to have spent the equivalent of $6,600
40. 2:38in today’s dollars on ice cream in one summer alone.
41. 2:43It was on American soil that the frozen dessert entered its golden age,
42. 2:47as inventors and entrepreneurs began to engineer ways to bring it to the masses.
43. 2:52In Philadelphia in 1843, Nancy Johnson patented
44. 2:57a revolutionary ice cream-making machine featuring a crank and beater,
45. 3:02which made the process easier for any home cook.
46. 3:05And storing ice cream was no longer an obstacle, as by the mid-1830s,
47. 3:10New England businessman “Ice King” Frederic Tudor
48. 3:14had greatly improved the ice trade,
49. 3:16shipping thousands of tons of ice to households across the globe.
50. 3:21Soon, ice cream was on every street corner.
51. 3:25In the late 1880s, political turmoil brought Italian immigrants to cities
52. 3:29like London, Glasgow, and New York,
53. 3:32where many took up jobs as street vendors selling licks of ice cream
54. 3:36for roughly a penny each.
55. 3:38Meanwhile, American druggists discovered the appeal of combining soda,
56. 3:44a drink thought to have therapeutic properties at the time,
57. 3:47with ice cream,
58. 3:48and a new social spot was born: the soda fountain.
59. 3:52When the sale of alcohol was banned in 1920,
60. 3:55many American saloons reinvented themselves as soda fountains,
61. 4:00and breweries like Anheuser-Busch and Yuengling
62. 4:02pivoted to producing ice cream.
63. 4:05At the same time, refrigeration technology was improving rapidly.
64. 4:10By the end of World War II,
65. 4:11the average American home had a freezer that could house a quart of ice cream.
66. 4:16Even trucks could be equipped with freezers full of frozen treats.
67. 4:21Today, ice cream continues to take on new forms.
68. 4:24And while some of its mysteries may never be solved,
69. 4:27one thing is certain: our love for ice cream will never thaw.