The origins of frozen desserts are obscure although several accounts exist about their history. Some sources describe ice cream-like foods as originating in Persia as far back as 550 BCE while others claim that the Roman Emperor Nero had ice collected from the Apennine Mountains to produce the first sorbet mixed with honey and wine. Although sorbets are believed to have been invented in Persia, other accounts say ice cream originated in the Mongol Empire and first spread to China during its expansion.
Its spread throughout Europe is sometimes attributed to Arab traders, but more often to Marco Polo. Though it's not mentioned in any of his writings, Polo is often credited with introducing sorbet-style desserts to Italy after learning of it during his travels to China. The Italian duchess Catherine de' Medici is said to have introduced flavored sorbet ices to France when she brought some Italian chefs with her to France upon marrying the Duke of Orléans (Henry II of France) in 1533. One hundred years later, Charles I of England was reportedly so impressed by the "frozen snow" that he offered his own ice cream maker a lifetime pension in return for keeping the formula secret, so that ice cream could be a royal prerogative. There is no evidence to support any of these legends.
Snow was used to cool drinks in Greece around 500 BC and Hippocrates is known to have criticized chilled drinks for causing "fluxes of the stomach". Snow collected from the lower slopes of mountains was unsanitary and iced drinks were believed to cause convulsions, colic and a host of other ailments. Seneca criticized the extravagant costs associated with iced desserts in an era without refrigeration.
Despite this, ice and snow were prized ingredients in ancient cuisines including Japanese, Chinese, Greek and Roman cuisines. Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs show a snow-filled vessel next to fruit juice. There are Tang dynasty records of a chilled dessert made with flour, camphor and water buffalo milk and recipes for snow-chilled sweets are included in a 1st-century Roman recipe book. There are Persian records from the 2nd century AD for sweetened chilled drinks with ice made by freezing water in the desert at night.
Ice cream was made possible only by the discovery of the endothermic effect. Prior to this, cream could only be chilled but not frozen. It was the addition of salt, that lowered the melting point of ice, which had the effect of drawing heat from the cream and allowing it to freeze. The first known record of this comes from the Indian poem Pancatantra, dating to the 4th century AD. The earliest written description of the process is known not from culinary texts, but the 13th-century writings of Ibn Abu Usaybia concerning medicine. The technique of "freezing" is not known from any European sources prior to the 16th century.
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