07-20-2013, 03:17 PM
There are some strange 'facts' drifting around the internet about Nero and his chilled desserts! Some are discussed here:
"Sno Ball" desserts - were they invented by Nero?
To precis my post in that thread, Suetonius mentions Nero's fondness for iced water. Pliny (Natural History 31.40) says that Nero boiled water and then chilled it by packing jars of it in snow to use as a mixer. These two points might have been enough for somebody to invent the story of the fruity ice dessert...
Apicius recommends chilling oysters in snow, and Martial liked to dilute his falernian wine with icy snow-water. Using snow to cool food and drink was fairly common, although expensive due to the cost of transportation and storage. There's no mention in Roman literature, as far as I know, of underground icehouses for storing ice, or more probably packed snow, collected from the mountains, but such things appear to have been known in the ancient world more widely.
The idea (found in other places on the net) that 'ice cream' was invented in 290BC by Q Fabius Maximus Gurges, who mixed snow with "milk, honey, eggs, fruit, and nuts" remains unexplained, meanwhile... ;-)
"Sno Ball" desserts - were they invented by Nero?
To precis my post in that thread, Suetonius mentions Nero's fondness for iced water. Pliny (Natural History 31.40) says that Nero boiled water and then chilled it by packing jars of it in snow to use as a mixer. These two points might have been enough for somebody to invent the story of the fruity ice dessert...
Apicius recommends chilling oysters in snow, and Martial liked to dilute his falernian wine with icy snow-water. Using snow to cool food and drink was fairly common, although expensive due to the cost of transportation and storage. There's no mention in Roman literature, as far as I know, of underground icehouses for storing ice, or more probably packed snow, collected from the mountains, but such things appear to have been known in the ancient world more widely.
The idea (found in other places on the net) that 'ice cream' was invented in 290BC by Q Fabius Maximus Gurges, who mixed snow with "milk, honey, eggs, fruit, and nuts" remains unexplained, meanwhile... ;-)
Nathan Ross
