SC - Ice

[Bethany Public Library]

I also lived in a house with internal food-cooling mechanisms, in the late
60's, early 70s. The house was about 200 years old, and had a root cellar
dug out from the main cellar. The root cellar had trays of sand on legs for
holding various items for storage. The cellar also had a stream that ran
around the inside of the cellar walls in a  small trench. It was always
deliciously cool down there--definitely sweater weather in the basement.

The explanation of the basement stream went thusly: The house was supposedly
situated above an island in an underground river. We continually got all
kinds of odd salamanders (the black with orange spots stands out in my mind,
as he became a science project) and other reptilian critters flowing
through. In the storm that precipitated the Johnstown Flood, our house
remained as it usually was, while the houses on either side of us flooded
terribly.They were more modern buildings. So I suppose the underground river
theory had some sort of basis in reality.

I have read somewhere (and perhaps it WAS Food and Drink in England or some
such) that Ice Houses were a folly of the upper classes in Tudor England,
where banqueting halls/houses for cold sweets were set up near the ice
houses for the cream of the crop of the guests to continue the repast at
leisure. I'm really going to have to wrack my brain for that source. It's
been about 7-8 years since I read that. I was looking for the origins of Ice
Cream at the time, and concluded that it didn't appear in Tudor England at
all, despite the ice houses (there is an extant example somewhere in
England. The old brain pan is getting rusty, though. I can't recall all of
it now).

Cheers

Aoife

An unidentified person queried:
>
>  << One quick question:  Does anyone on the list have any references to
> how
>   medieval cooks kept things cold, since the invention of the refrigerator
>
> was
>   not to come about for many, many, many years?   >>
margarite penned:
I lived in a house from 1948 to 1952 that had a spring house. Water
flowed through a sunken area about 5' long 18" wide and 2" deep at the
shallow end to about a foot deep at the deep end. the water was about 1/2 an
inch deep at the shallow end except in the spring when it would over flow,
and about 10" at the deep end