Harvest of the Cold Months: The Social History of Ice and Ices (Penguin Cookery Library)

by Elizabeth David (Author), Jill Norman (Introduction)

• Used

  Paperback
  1996

  $3.23

  This is a social history of ice, rather than a practical cook-book. It covers the history of the use of ice in food and drink from its Middle-Eastern origins, and its gradual spreading through Western countries. It gives information on the early means of preserving it, and mentions travellers' tales of coming upon iced drinks for the first time. There is also some personal anecdote based on the author's experiences in India and the Far East.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1994

  $3.23

  Elizabeth David's social history of ice starts in 17th-century Italy, and Florence in particular. She quotes from contemporary accounts to describe the intriguing snow and ice pits, and describes the huge Florentine banquets which usually ended with spectacular pyramids of ice and fruit. David tells the story of Francesco Procopio who, in 1686, established what is considered to be the world's first cafe, Le Cafe Procope, in Saint-Germain-des-Pres in Paris; she recounts the reactions of travellers in the 18th and 19th centuries first seeing the ice-trenches covered with pyramid-shaped straw roofs, and tells how India depended on its ice being shipped out from Boston. The British fishing industry was revolutionized after a Scot visiting China in 1785 saw the fishermen drawing their supplies of snow and ice from store houses situated along the coast, and transporting their catch packed in ice over long distances inland. Within a few years, salmon and other fine fish was travelling in similar fashion from Scotland to London all the year round. On the domestic front, Elizabeth David tells of the story of James Gunter, who founded the ice cream and confectionary business in the early years of the 19th century and which for so long and so famously bore his name. David ends this history of ice at the outbreak of World War II.