Ice houses and ice conservation
Neveros y pozos de hielo para conservación y refrescos
- Date
- c. 1550-1660 · confidence medium
- Place
- Florence and Rome, Italy; Greenwich (1619)
- Credited to
- Italian courts (the Medici, Buontalenti); spread to France and England in the 17th century
- Field
- Life & health
What it is
Underground pits insulated with straw, where winter snow and ice were stored to preserve food and chill drinks all year round, together with the discovery (Della Porta, 1589) that saltpetre in ice produces cold enough to freeze sorbets. The origin of the ice trade and of refrigeration.
The first English icehouse was built for James I at Greenwich in 1619.
What it led to
- The snow trade as a regulated industry (the Spanish snow wells)
- Sorbets and ices at European courts
- The science of cold and thermometry (Fahrenheit's freezing mixtures)
Built on
- Persian and Chinese ice pits
- Transported mountain snow
Made possible
- Hand-cranked ice cream freezer (Nancy Johnson)1843
- Mechanical vapour-compression refrigeration1834-1856
- 19th-century ice trade
- Mechanical refrigeration (concept of the freezing mixture)