Braden Hall

So the ancient Persians figured out that in the desert, you could use evaporative cooling at night in the winter to create ice.

And then they would store it in these huge sort of beehive-shaped structures, which had like a solar chimney at the top to pull out hot air.

and a place at the bottom to bring in cool air, and that allows them to store ice year-round.

So rather than having to go to your nearest mountaintop and carve out a block of ice, they were able to make it in the middle of the desert, which I think is a pretty cool way to start.

Yeah, so it's fascinating that they figured this out and they exploited it.

And then that technology spreads as we get the Arabs coming in and conquering Persia in, let's say, like 650 AD.

And when that happens, they bring in their own bit to the equation, which is they go from using, let's say, rose water and honey to make sort of a shaved ice type of deal in Persia.

ancient Persia, they bring in milk and sugar that they've got from their trade routes.

And when they do that, we start to get the very first rudimentary forms of ice cream.

And they're thickened with things like salep, which is an orchid root, or with mastic, which is like this gum that comes from an evergreen.

And so suddenly you get this really weird, stretchy, kind of stringy almost ice cream, which you can still find on the streets in Turkey.

But yeah, so that's sort of the really earliest ice cream we get is during that period.

And you should definitely eat it first because life is short, right?

You're not a nutritionist.

No, no, no, no.

That's right.

Cultural historian.

It's an emphasis on like, you know, like where do the good times come from?

But yeah, and then, you know, it progresses from there as they start to unravel the science.

So by, let's say, like the 16th century, they start to figure out.