Was there ice in ancient times? How was it made?

There was ice in ancient times. In the beginning, only natural ice could be used, and it was only available in the northern regions where it froze.

As early as the pre-Qin era, the people of the time used natural ice for refrigeration, to keep food fresh and make cold drinks.

According to the "Zhou Li" records, the Zhou royal family to ensure that the use of ice in the summer, specifically set up the appropriate institutions to manage the "ice government", the person in charge of the "Ling people".

The department's establishment is not small, **** there are 80 "employees". Generally, from December every winter, the workers start taking natural ice for storage.

Ancient ice storage conditions were certainly not as good as those of modern times, and the method was relatively simple.

Every year during the cold season, the ancients began to chisel ice for storage, as this was when the ice was hardest and not easy to melt. The officials who managed the ice storage affairs supervised the slaves and farmers to go to places with good water quality to chisel and collect it, and hide it in the pre-prepared ice cellar.

The ice cellars were built in cool places, deep underground. They were lined with fresh straw and mats, and once the ice was placed on top, they were covered with insulating materials such as rice bran and leaves, and then the cellar was sealed to be used in the following year.

Because of this storage, about two-thirds of the hidden ice would melt each year, so the ancients often increased the amount of hidden ice to three times the amount of ice they needed to use.

Ice wells from the Warring States period have been found in Xinzheng, Henan; Yixian, Hebei; and Xianyang, Shaanxi.

Above, an ice cellar in the Forbidden City

And in some places in the south where ice does not form, artisans learned to make ice. Around the end of the Tang Dynasty, artisans mined large quantities of saltpeter in the production of gunpowder. Occasionally, they discovered that saltpeter absorbs a lot of heat when dissolved in water, warming the surrounding water until it freezes.

Some craftsmen began to use saltpeter to make ice.

Expanded:

After the advent of the ice cubes, there was a popularity of "ice drinks", similar to the cold drinks we have now.

When it became possible to make ice in the summer, "chilled food" also appeared in the market, and people salvaged seafood and transported it farther and preserved it longer by freezing it in ice, and the standard of living of the ancients also improved greatly.

Then later, the people began to put sugar and various fruits into the jars when making ice, gradually enriching the cold food products.

To the Song Dynasty, the market of cold food on the pattern more up, the Southern Song Dynasty, the summer market on the sale of "snow soaked beans water", "snow soaked plum wine" and other beverages.

The Yuan Dynasty merchants even added fruit pulp and milk in ice, which is very similar to modern ice cream.