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The Ice Cream: A Recipe from 1687
- fyfy18 7y agoThe original recipe sounds like it would have more of the texture of a smoothie or slushy than ice cream. Not doing that seems like missing half the recipe.
- acd 7y agowww.icecreamhistory.net. Retrieved 31 August 2018. "History of ice creams begun around 500 B.C. in the Persian Empire where ice was used in combination with grape juices, fruits, and other flavors to produce very expensive and hard to produce summertime treats." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cream#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cream#History
- qrybam 7y agoStill amazes me how the Persians invented a way to create and then store ice through the summer months for these treats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakhch%C4%81l https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakhch%C4%81l
- ant6n 7y agoUnfortunate how these traditional building methods for cooling have been replaced by loud and wasteful ACs etcs
- jaclaz 7y agoYep, but that, together with various similar and derived food, that both the Greeks and the Romans had, is more like sorbets. The actual "cream" is thought to have been invented by Buontalenti: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardo_Buontalenti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardo_Buontalenti (eggs are needed to make "real" ice-cream): https://www.florenceinferno.com/the-invention-of-ice-cream-in-florence-history-and-legend/ https://www.florenceinferno.com/the-invention-of-ice-cream-i...
- dsr_ 7y agoOnly if you're going to "no true Scotsman" ice cream. For anyone not subscribing to that view, ice cream can be made with or without eggs. French style, Philadelphia style, Gelato, and churnless all differ in whether there are egg whites, egg yolks, cooked bases, and density. One recent method is to use a Pacojet to take a hard-frozen solid block and turn it into ice cream.
- markvdb 7y agoPersian ice cream tradition since 500 BC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastani_sonnati https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastani_sonnati
- lm28469 7y agoThey must have really liked ice cream to go through the trouble of transporting/storing ice in Iran 2500 years ago. The logistic must have been impressive.
- mehrdadn 7y agoYou can learn more about it in the video here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17670608 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17670608
- ahje 7y agoThere are plenty of mountains in Iran. Can't be _that_ hard to water freeze over winter, and then bring large blocks of ice down the mountainside with a sturdy cart come spring. Bothersome, yes, but not that incredible. Edit: They had building where water was frozen during winter and ice stored during summer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakhcha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakhcha
- Gibbon1 7y agoTehran is at about 4000 feet. Snows at least occasionally. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4PE3mJbBms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4PE3mJbBms
- cpach 7y agoHere’s a working link :) Such an amazing structure! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakhch%C4%81l https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakhch%C4%81l
- iamshs 7y agoI don’t know about Iran, but in 1600’s ice cubes in Lahore, Punjab were made by freezing water in wooden pans in the foothills of mountains. The pans were swept early in the morning, and transported to special underground pens lined up with straw, hay etc. Ice lasted through summer and Mughal kings enjoyed their cold drinks.
- mathw 7y agoI'm unfamiliar with a convention in the updated ingredients list - what's "3 T rosewater"? I'm guessing it's probably tsp - teaspoons - but one doesn't want to overdo the rosewater! Clearly this is something I'm expected to understand, but I've never seen it before.
- cr1895 7y agoCapital T probably referring to tablespoon, not teaspoon.
- danielparks 7y agoThe convention is that capital T is tablespoons and lowercase t is teaspoons.
- bregma 7y ago3 T is the American spelling of 45 mL
- krisrm 7y agoThe convention is that capital T = tablespoons, but 3 tablespoons of rosewater is an ungodly amount to put in just about anything.
- jorams 7y agoThe original recipe consists of one sentence about the ingredients and then a long description of a method for freezing it. The reworked recipe is just a fairly normal ice cream recipe with some added rosewater. > If you recreate the recipe using the original method, please let me know how it goes in the comments! So really the only thing they got from the recipe is that perhaps rosewater is a possible ingredient for ice cream?
- knightofmars 7y agoFood blogs of this nature are cringe inducing. People want to post interesting content but don't want to actually do work to accurately recreate the recipe. The last paragraph also highlights this. This individual "shared the recipe" which was literally providing modern rosewater ice cream. "I was thrilled to share this recipe with participants in the Clark’s “Antique Ice Cream Social” event last month. During the test-tasting, a few participants who expressed a general dislike for rosewater found that this recipe passed muster. It didn’t taste “soapy” or overly perfumed. (You can watch a clip of me talking about ice-cream making here.)" I want to say that I understand there is a place for this type of thing, bringing the old out into the light of the future. This type of blog however often runs the risk of coming across as lazy. It's similar to the myriad of recipe blogs where someone uses a recipe and provide high definition photos of the result (credit here for actually creating the food true to recipe) staged in some manner (usually with pint jars, rough wood, and flowers somewhere in the scene). The problem is they aren't actually providing any original content with regards to the actual recipe. No tips on altering the recipe to improve texture or flavor, just a 1:1 reproduction. I'd take a low-def Geocities website with Kenji Lopez Alt content over the type of blog I mentioned hands-down.
- la_barba 7y agoThat's a bit harsh. How many HN highly voted articles have we seen about a dev excited about caching, bloom filters, CPU timing, arcane C++ trivia, fuzzing or other basic concepts without doing any original research of their own?
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- todd8 7y agoMy dad grew up in rural Iowa almost 100 years ago. He didn't have electricity or running water and no air conditioning or refrigeration. Ice cream was a rare treat that could be bought on a trip into town or perhaps made in the winter. Ice was available in the winter, and also in the summer because large blocks of ice would be cut from frozen ponds during the winter and stored in ice houses. These ice houses here partially underground structures, like a barn but buried up to their roof underground. I saw an ice house that was no longer in use as a young child, and as I recall (I would have been perhaps seven years old) I was told that it was filled with sawdust, hay, or straw to insulate the blocks of ice. Today, the reported underground temperature in Iowa at 40 inches is about 65°F (18°C) and deeper it can reaches a steady state temperature of 45 to 50°F (7 to 13 °C). I don't know how late into summer those ice blocks survived. I remember growing up that my father greatly enjoyed making homemade ice cream; I suppose it connected him to the happy times of his quite difficult childhood.
- edge17 7y agoIf done properly, it can survive quite a bit. Much of the ice that was imported into India in the early 1800's came from Boston, cut from rivers around Boston https://www.wired.com/2010/09/0913calcutta-ice-ship/ https://www.wired.com/2010/09/0913calcutta-ice-ship/
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoStately homes in the UK often have an ice-house in the grounds somewhere. I think they're sited to make use of underground water, as in the use of underground streams in the Yakhchal. A damp shaded spot can be surprisingly cool in Summer. As an aside the Ancient Greeks had a type of wine cooler that worked on evaporative cooling using an exterior porous pot and an internal glazed pot, with wet sand placed in the gap.
- cr0sh 7y ago> As an aside the Ancient Greeks had a type of wine cooler that worked on evaporative cooling using an exterior porous pot and an internal glazed pot, with wet sand placed in the gap. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot-in-pot_refrigerator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pot-in-pot_refrigerator Still in use today, especially in the "developing world" - usually as a means to keep certain medicines and drugs cooled that would go bad without it.
- tpetry 7y agoInteresting how the ingredients did not change that much to nowadays. 2 parts cream for 1 part milk is still widely used. The amount of sugar may be a little bit different but is still widely correct too.
- dunham 7y agoThe original recipe (quoted in the article) called for all cream and only "sugar rosewater" for sweetening (no amount specified), frozen on salted ice for one hour with no churning or mixing. The "updated" recipe was just a standard, modern ice cream recipe with some rosewater added, churned in a modern ice cream machine and then frozen for two hours.
- JadeNB 7y agoThe original mentions "Roach Allom", but the update says nothing about it. What is it?
- gatherhunterer 7y agoPotassium aluminum sulfate, the salt used to keep the ice cold for longer.