How did ancient civilizations make ice cream? - Vivian Jiang

1,147,820 views ・ 2024-05-30

TED-Ed


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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