Rédey Judit: Hideg nyalat és spanyol tekercs. A fagylalt, a jégkrém és a parfé története (Budapest, 2007)

COOL LICKS AND SPANISH ROLLS The History of Ice Cream, Popsicles and Frozen Custard „Perhaps no one dislikes ice cream who tasted it once. Regardless ojage or sex, we all know this sweet delicacy, which can he consumed in any season. Ice cream is a cooling dessert in summertime, while favored coffee or pastry shops bring can bring the colors of summer back even in the wintertime with their intimate ambiance, their interior design and naturally, by their selection. Most of us know and love ice cream, however - although it has been a veritable favorite among sweets since ancient times - we all know too little about it. Many famous people liked ice cream, even if was not exactly in the forms or flavors known today." (Dr. Gabriella Eszterhai-Nagy: The Queen of Sweets) The history of ice cream, and its close relatives: popsicles and frozen custard (parfait) cannot be separated from that of cooling and freezing. Both histories are full of legends, colored by the vivid memories added by later ages. Objects and written documents survived, though which testify to the origins and the spreading of cooling and of cold sweets. Myth and reality often blend together, and it is difficult to draw the boundary between. Humanity's need for cooling probably dates back to the dawn of the cultural history of mankind. For a long time, natural snow or ice was used to create an environment cooler than the surroundings, for cooling drinks and foods, and even residential rooms in warmer seasons. The ice produced in wintertime - or in higher, mountainous regions - was stored in pits or chambers, in underground storage places insulated from heat. Snow and ice was transported to hotter climates mainly by boat, and also through land paths. Already in Sumer, the cradle of human civilization in Mesopotamia, people used chill pits thousands of years ago, using ice chips from the mountains. The pits were painstakingly covered by leafy branches to protect them from the heat. The Sumerians liked cool drinks, and they brewed several kinds of beer. You can see figures on the impresses of stamp rolls, drinking nice and cool beer through long straws. Artificial chilling as well as air-cooling was already used in ancient Egypt. Frescoes show scenes where water was poured into unglazed clay pottery, through the pores of which it evaporated easily, cooling the contents of the pots. Paintings also show that the efficiency of evaporation cooling was heightened by adding a vivid circulation of air using large fans. People in India even utilized the nightly diffusion of heat from the ground for the purpose of cooling: during cloudless nights, they placed flat clay pots filled with water to pits lined with straw, or onto flat rooftops. If the weather was favorable (cloudless with little humidity), the water in the pots cooled down so much that it started to develop a thin layer of ice on its surface.