Dr. Garritt (Chip) Van Dyk

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 have 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 this is really important because dessert is the most important of any meal 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, right?

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

And we still get that period in that sort of early modern period where there's this really fine dividing line between magic and science.

So we get this book called Magia Naturalis by Jean-Baptiste de la Porta.

in Italy in 1568, and he's describing how you can use potassium nitrate, which is saltpeter, which most people think about with, let's say, gunpowder.

And you put that into ice, and then suddenly you get much lower temperatures.

So your ability to freeze things without having to have enormous amounts of ice

suddenly becomes available to you.

And so suddenly he figures out that technology.

You fast forward to 1690 and suddenly people are saying, this is great, but you know what?

You could even do it with salt.