[Sca-cooks] evaporative cooling

[Volker Bach]

>Are you speaking of modern times or do we have any
>evidence of evaporative cooling being used in
>period?

The Kunst- und Gewerbemuseum Hamburg has a green-glaze
pottery beverage cooler that probably dates to the
sixteenth century. Some parts of it appear
deliberately left unglazed, perhaps with evaporative
cooling in mind (it makes no aesthetic sense to glaze
the inside of the beverage compartment, but not the
visible outside of the water compartment surrounding
it). I'll have a closer look at the thing next time I
visit - it is just about possible it's actually
designed as a warmer, but I doubt it. 

>I believe the ice houses, that started this thread,
>were only used in the 16th century, and not used
>throughout our period of study.

IIRC that is mostly a 'when and where' question. Ice
houses are not in evidence in England before the 16th
century, though they may have arrived slightly
earlier. At least one local historians believes that
the very deep, narrow cellars under wealthy residences
in Nuremberg (shown to tourists as 'dungeons') were
designed as ice stores. They date to the fifteenth
century. Yet culinary sources as early as the Roman
Empire assume the availability of ice or snow as a
given. I personally suspect that stored ice was always
aailable as a luxury - something the very wealthy and
the fortunate few living in sophisticated urban
centres could enjoy - but not popular outside the
Mediterranean and Middle East until well into the
Renaissance. It seems not to have found broad
application until freezing with salt-ice or
saltpetre-ice mixes was invented, at least according
to Elizabeth David. 

Giano


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