Synopsis
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.