March 14, 2026 • 46 mins
Frozen water not only chills our tea and cocktails -- for centuries, it was one of the only ways to keep fresh food from spoiling. In this classic episode: Anney and Lauren dig into the sometimes rocky history and extremely cool science of ice.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to Savor Prediction of iHeart Video. I'm
Annie Reese and I'm.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Lauren vocal Bum and today we have a classic episode
for you about ice like frozen water.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Yes. Was there any particular reason this was on your mind? Lauren?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
You know, I was going through our backlog and I
was like, that one was a really interesting episode, and
then I listened to it and I was like, oh,
it was, yeah, and so here we are.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
That one was a really interesting one. It's one of
the things that I think a lot of people me
included take for granted ice.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Oh absolutely, and just like exactly where refrigeration technology has
taken us and how important it is to not only
you know, like like our health and well being, but
just just a lot of things about our daily life
depend upon it. And it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
It is.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Our food ways were irrevocably changed and we can have
more medicine and stuff like that, and that's terrific.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah, it's usually a pretty consistent timeline element in the
history of like and then refrigeration. Yep. Yeah, it really
did change things. But we were we were quite young
when we recorded this.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
We were this was pretty early on, but I think
it's I think it's still a solid episode.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Mm hmmm, mm hmm. This one was an interesting one
to come back to because times have changed since we
recorded it, and now I don't know how to feel
when I hear the word ice anymore.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
But yeah, yeah, it's real weird listening to our perhaps
more innocent selves tossing the word ice around with just
no cares in the world. And I guess the only
thing that we're going to say about that here is
that we deeply respect and appreciate our immigrant communities. You know,
(02:22):
not only because they sometimes share their amazing food and
food ways with us. That part is nice, but you know,
just as human beings. We like human beings.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Yeah, and that's the thing about food that we make
the point on here so often is that connection, right,
That sharing community part is so important. If you would
like to know more about ICE, the government agency and
how we got to hear the other show I'm On
(02:56):
Stuff whe Never Told You has a four part mini
series on that can check that out.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah, in this episode, you say that you don't really
enjoy having beverages with icy.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Still do not, No, I know that has not changed.
I do like really cool beverages though, okay, like not
cold but really cool.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Interesting, all right.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
I know people with their temperature preferences when it comes
to beverages and food I find fascinating.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Oh yeah, like I will put I'm the kind of
guy who puts like extra ice into a beverage in order,
like at the risk of watering it down to get
it extra cold, because sometimes under the right circumstance, I
just want it to be yeah, very chilly.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Mm hmmm. Yeah again, I feel like it's on the
same plain to me, is the texture preference thing that
people have?
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, imature preference. Yeah. I'll also like
microwave a cold cup of coffee. I know it changes
the flavor. I'm a beast, It's okay. And then if
it gets a little too hot during that microwave session,
I'll pop an ice cube in there. You're going through
(04:18):
multiple stages, and listening to this episode makes me feel
like I am some kind of royalty to be able
to do that.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
But now it's too hot, we must get the ice.
You know, you have your preferences.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Yeah, we have the technology.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Exactly, and you can learn more about how in this episode. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Yeah, so without further ado, Let's let former Annie and
Lauren take it away. Hello, and welcome to Savor. I'm
Annie Reas and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. And today we're talking
about ice.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yes, and this is one of those things I can't
have because of my tooth.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Oh really?
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Oh man? Yeah? But I actually, I mean did not
like ice before that. Oh really no, I thought it
was taking out space that could be used for more drink.
Oh waist. I like cold.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
I mean I lived for like fourteen years in Florida too,
so ice was pretty important to my lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
I like a chill drink without ice. Ah.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Does this impact your cocktail decisions? Like, if you're at
a cocktail bar, do you specifically try to order straight
up drinks rather than on the rocks drinks?
Speaker 1 (05:44):
I do like straight up drinks better, but I also
appreciate that rocks slow you down in the case of
alcohol specifically, like, that's two different nights that I might
be aiming to have I see you. But despite all
of this, I have an embarrassment of riches when it
comes to ice molds. I've got, like any Star Wars
thing you can't imagine, the millennium falcon is my favorite.
(06:05):
I got the spherical thing, the big cube thing. I'm
not sure why.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
I love a big cube.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Who doesn't love a big cube? All right? Show us
that person, please? All right. It all brings us to
our question ice. What is it?
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Well? Ice is frozen water?
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Done and done? Yep? Cool. Well, now that that's that
we're with.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Now, No, the technical details that go into ice being
frozen water are really fascinating. I promise you're making a
face like you don't entirely believe me. But okay, let's
break this down a little bit.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Follow along.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Okay, all right, first, basic physics review. Any given substance
has a temperature at which it's solid, at which it's liquid,
and at which it's gas.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Right.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Yeah, there's also plasma and like a few weird ones,
but most of those are not going to get served
to you in your glass of root beer. So let's
concentrate for now.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
If you apply increasing energy to a solid like plastic
or iron, the molecules in it will become increasingly energetic.
They'll break structural bonds among each other and start sluicing around.
And that's that's a liquid. Uh huh uh huh. Apply
even more energy to that liquid, and the molecules will
get even more energetic. They'll break apart entirely and float off.
(07:29):
That's a gas, and heat is energy, or the transfer
of energy from one object to another. But yeah, so okay,
if you've got water, that's a bunch of molecules of
H two O hanging out with each other. H two Oh,
that's a two hydrogen atoms stuck to an oxygen atom,
sort of like a mickey mouse head.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
I never thought of it. Yeah, yeah, no, that's.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Basically what it looks like under normal Earth circumstances from
between the temperatures of about zero to one hundred celsius
or thirty two to two hundred and twelve fahrenheigh. The
hydrogen atoms in those hto molecules are constantly making and
breaking loose bonds with each other. They're slushing.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Oh my gosh, you look so scandalized. I am scandalized,
sloshing my skinness.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
But okay, so you apply heat above that upper point,
they'll break those bonds and escape as water vapor into
the air. And if you remove energy to blow that
lower point, the molecules will slow down so much that
the hydrogen atoms lock up with each other in these
fascinatingly orderly repeating patterns called crystals. Water molecules take up
(08:45):
more space locked together as crystals than they do as
a liquid, which is a why water expands as it
freezes and b why ice floats in water. It's the
same mass but less dense. And physically speaking, when you
put ice in drink, you're not making the drink cold,
You're making the ice warm until it melts back into water.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
You are blowing my mind, Lauren, blowing my mind?
Speaker 2 (09:13):
What about what about nutrition?
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Though? Well, the average ice cube, I believe has two
seven hundred and thirty eight calories, So watch out. No,
it's it's water.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
So it's made of water.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
It's made of water, unless you're making ice out of espresso,
which I do recommend, and your coffee not in your water? Ooh,
are like pickle juice circulate that? Then that's different. But
we're talking about water ice. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
And also there's like a lot more than I could
have said about ice physics up there. But I'm this
is a food show.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
It is. And one of the things that I kept
running into on this episode that I love about ice
is I mean think about ice skating and ice sculpture.
There's so many non food things that ice is involved in.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
But I think we should do an episode on ice
sculpture at some point because it is food and hospitality.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Related, it's adjacent.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
It's a yes enough, so I think it deserves its
own episode.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Oh, I'm in I was sort of bummed when I
didn't get to research it too much. There's a little
bit about ice sculpture in here. But Americans love ice,
and we have probably heard I've definitely heard when you're
traveling in different countries not to expect as much ice
and drinks, and that has been my experience. Again, I'm
(10:37):
totally on board with this, but a lot of people
I travel with we're not so happy about it. The
ice industry makes a cool two point five billion dollars annually,
and most of that comes from the prepackaged stuff you
find in those like beer coolers and stores.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Sure, the word ice in its modern English spelling dates
from the fourteen hundreds, which is like a surprisingly long
time for a word to have survived in a in
a single spelling, but the sound of the word actually
dates back to Proto Germanic, which is also just a
very long time. Yeah for a word ho stuck around.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
I love that it is. I also love as it
is clear novelty ice shapes.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I was trying to remember.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Was it Virgin Atlantic flights that had those ice cube
shaped like Richard Branson's head. I'm pretty sure that's true.
But that's beautiful. Can you imagine having like a mold
of your own face for ice cubes for people on
a plane that you own for them to enjoy.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
I hadn't imagined that previously, but now now I'm thinking
of it, and I like it the more that I
think about it.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
It's resolution season, Lauren. You could make a goal. You
could make a goal.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
I believe three D printing could make this dream come true.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
I think it could, and we have access. But anyway,
there's a lot of shapes out there. There's smiley faces,
goldfish teeth, shark fins, legos, snowflake stars, skulls, fossil ships,
robots and guns because freeze, get it, graz because freeze,
get it. Beans meant to be used with coffee as
in cool beans, get it, those shotglasses, icicles for wine.
(12:07):
So many options out there.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
It's a beautiful ice scape.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
It is, or a frozen healthscape. I just like saying
frozen healthscape. It's a good term.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
I wanted to put a note in here about refrigerators
and freezers, kind of mixing in with the physics, but
also in a transition sort of way, because these are
amazing machines that transfer heat from the inside of a
box to the outside of that box. Thus they regulate
the temperature on the inside of that box and keep
it relatively low compared with the air around the box.
(12:42):
I don't usually think about it, but it really is
just awesome. Yeah, and it's not only awesome because cold
things are fun to eat. As it turns out, most
bacteria that cause disease in humans, that is, pathogenic bacteria
go into a hibernation of sorts below about forty degrees
fahrenheit aka four point four celsius or wherein they're not reproducing,
(13:04):
and that's why we keep our fridges at or below
that temperature. However, many non pathogenic bacteria and other microorganisms
can grow at those temperatures, and some of them like
eating our food as much as we do, which is
what causes food to spoil. As we've said before on
the show, microorganisms are eating your food before you get
a chance to causing unpleasant flavors and textures. But even
(13:28):
they will go into hibernation or maybe even die off
when you bring food down to around thirty two fahrenheit
or zero celsius, because that's the temperature at which water freezes,
and microbes generally need liquid water to survive just as
much as we do. For a long time, ice cubes
weren't just a thing to put in drinks. They were
(13:48):
one of the only things that could keep your food
safe to eat for more than a couple hours. And
we'll get into the history of that right after we
get back from a quick break for a word from
our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you. So.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
American rapper and actor Ice Cube was born as O'sha
Jackson in nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Oh wait, yeah, I mean also a good ice cube
to talk about.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
He has a good ice cube to talk about. Thank
you for coming along on this slame joke with me.
All right, So ice has been around for a long
long time, but humans harvesting ice is not quite as old.
It's so old, but not quite as long comparatively, right, Yeah,
(14:45):
In some northern areas where ice is easier to come by,
hunter gatherers were harvesting ice earlier than other people, primarily
for preservation and storage. Hunters in icy regions would use
the ice as a way to make the meat from
and their kills keep for longer periods. They might not
have known why this worked precisely that they knew that
(15:07):
it did. In some cases, when any leftover kill was
buried to hide it from predators or other hunters and
the conditions were right, they were essentially freezing food. Sometimes
this happened via totally unavoidable accident. It was just that
cold gonna happen. Natural caves or insulated underground pits are
(15:28):
chambers were popular ways to keep things like grains chilly
and preserved. Ice pits existed four thousand years ago in Mesopotamia.
Evidence suggest the Chinese were harvesting and storing ice by
one one hundred BCE, and this ice might be transported
for several miles. The upper class in ancient civilizations like Persia, Rome, Greece,
(15:51):
and Egypt, who could afford to paid someone to go
up a mountain and get ice and or snow, used
it in drinks chilled fruits and frozen desserts like flavored
ices no matter the weather, and tea, which has been
around for quite some time, as see our tea episode
for that. Yes Yes, was one of the first flavored
(16:12):
drinks to be ice. Also lemonadeh early lemonade. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
In Persia in particular by around four hundred BCE that
worked out how to create ice through the fascinating physics
of nocturnal cooling.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Ooh, nocturnal cool nocturnal cooling.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Okay, yeah, yeah, So this is a way to make
artificial ice, to make man made ice, in which you're
taking advantage of this natural thing that just happens to
make ice overnight, even when the ambient air temperature is
well above freezing. So Persia's cities, even in deserts, were
serviced by these underground canals, and to make this ice,
(16:53):
they would make these wide, shallow pits or channels that
were protected by tall walls from daytime sun and nighttime
wind and fill them with just a couple inches of
water overnight. Because the open sky is very cold when
the sun isn't hitting it, heat would radiate up out
of the water into the sky and by the early
hours of the morning, the water would freeze. It can
(17:16):
be like forty degrees fahrenheit outside, like four point five
celsius or more and this will work.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
The surface area of the pans er channels also helps it.
As water evaporates into the air. It takes a bit
more heat energy to do it. And they had these
domed buildings to store the ice in during warmer times
that were highly insulated, vented at the top, built over
these cool pits. It was amazing technology for the time.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
That sounds pretty amazing. That's another thing that I didn't
get to look into. But things like a glose of
ice has so many uses. It does it does?
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Oh is hotels?
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Iso tell I've been through an ice bar. Yeah, all
these memories are flooding back. Oh my goodness, I was
in China. It was so cold.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Anyway, you're already like you run, yeah, like you're chilly
all the time.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Yeah. There's usually some gloves and a scarf involved in
this podcasting.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Oh yeah, she's been in here in like a parka.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Yeah, still cold. I had fun though at the ice bar.
But back to the history. Yes, in the Mediterranean, snow
harvested from the mountains was sold per day are stored
in pits that were covered with branches, leafmets, or cloth.
While Alexander the Great was in Petra, he oversaw the
(18:35):
digging of trenches that were then filled with snow and
covered with branches so that his soldiers could enjoy it
chilled wine in the summer. How kind, Yeah, chilled wine
very important. Snow and ice weren't just used for food
and drink and food storage. Early physicians also used ice
(18:56):
to treat all sorts of ailments, many that we still
use ice for today, like inflammation and fever. But when
the Roman Empire fell, so too did ice for popularity,
and it wasn't until like the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
that it started to kind of come back onto the scene.
Ice harvested from Lebanon's mountains was shipped to Cairo to
(19:18):
be enjoyed by Egyptian royalty. Around this time, ice sculptures
started to enter the elegant party scene as a centerpiece
at banquets, and if we look at Europe, Italians often
get the credit for reintroducing ice to that continent, followed
swiftly by the French. But the French were doing it
more as a show of well so were the Italian
(19:39):
They both were, like the case of Henry the Third,
who impressed his guest with tables piled high with snow
and dice. However, many Europeans turned up their noses at
the idea of chill drinks. One quote from the time
described it as a mark of excessive and effeminate luxury.
(20:00):
Huh yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
How Indeed, over on the Indian subcontinent, by the mid
to late sixteenth century, some of the also not unshowy
royalty of the Mughal Empire were having ice harvested in
the Himalayas and carted down daily, as ice drenths and
desserts were very vogue, and also it's just hot as
all get out during the summer, and a lot of
(20:23):
cities that the royalty were hanging out in in times
when that was too expensive or just as a supplement,
their ice cellars would be filled up with ice created
through the aforementioned nocturnal cooling. And some of the reports
I was reading about it, they had a great system
set up, Like outside of the cities in open fields,
they had these shallow beds dug lined with us straw
or other dried plant waste for insulation, and on cold,
(20:46):
clear still nights, a whole team of workers would be
called with like vocal calls or music to come fill
earthenware pans and enter too deep with water and fit
them into the beds, and in the morning they would
pack the ice into the cellars.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Is pretty amazing good system indeed.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Well maybe not for the workers.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
No fruit ice.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Yes, productive system.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
That's a good word. Around the same time, many of
the well to do in Europe, the Middle East, and
China had ice houses, from palaces and estates to monasteries
and abbey's. I'm starting to think the well off people
in this time in these areas just had a lot
of houses. You got your pineapple house, you got your orangerie,
you got your ice house. Just a very specific little
(21:30):
house for whatever, for whatever thing you want to show
off that you could not only get, but could make
a house for. Of course, they did have to show
off these things even more, and by eighteenth century the
architecture of these ice houses had gotten quite showy, featuring
things like Grecian pillars or Gothic archways. These ice houses
(21:51):
were almost solely used for ice. At first makes sense,
but not until later did people start to view them
as we might a refrigerator as a place to store food. Yeah, however,
ice had become more commonplace by this time. They might
not have had ice houses, but peasants in Europe were
known to have little stacks of ice constructed out of branches, leaves,
and heather for installation. Yeah yeah, yeah, and they would
(22:14):
put these structures near water that froze during the winter time.
During the nineteenth century Europe, in places where warm and
mild winters failed to produce ice, merchants that depended on
ice for business, like butchers, would scramble to buy ice
from Greenland's cargo ships of ice. Archaeological evidence indicates that
ice pits were present in Jamestown, Virginia, all the way
(22:37):
back in the seventeenth century, as the colonists brought the
European proclivity for chill drinks and ice desserts with them.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
And the technology of these little makeshift ice houses.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Yeah right. To get this ice, ice harvesters would cut
it from frozen bodies of water in the winter and
store it in these pits or cellars during the rest
of the year.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
They also might have built huts over these cellars to
a prevent loss of cool air and be to keep
perishable items in like meat and milk.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
By eighteenth century, the pits and cellars were improved upon
with the ice house, which was used for chilling food
and drink and making ice cream. Ice cream comes up
all the time in the history of ice and storing ice.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Two These were more formal sellers that were reinforced by
stone lining and topped with more elaborate buildings.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Yes, and two people who had probably very elaborate buildings
Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, who both had ice houses.
One of the first advertisements for ice was published in
Philadelphia in seventeen ninety nine. Europeans visiting the northern United
States in the seventeen nineties reported Americans drinking iced water
(23:42):
and that hotels employed buckets of ice to cool down
their room. The first cargo shipment of ice made the
journey from New York to Charleston, South Carolina, also in
seventeen ninety nine, and one fellow out of Boston, Frederick Tudor,
made quite a lot of money shipping ice harvested from
Massachusetts overseas. Between eighteen oh five and eighteen sixty over
(24:06):
twelve thousand tons of ice. His nickname the ice cream.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Like from Adventure Time?
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Is that his name it is, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (24:15):
I think so?
Speaker 1 (24:16):
The ice gaing ice care. It's like game of throw.
It could be, you know, depending on the move that
you're in. He pushed for the construction of ice chest.
He sent sales agents out to encourage businesses to sell
ice cream with an ice chest. Sung the praises of
ice for preserving food. Helped popularize the sale of fizzy water,
(24:40):
and he gave any bar owner that agreed to sell
iced drinks at the same price as warm ones a
year's worth of free ice oooh oh tricksy yes, And
perhaps in part due to this, the market and popularity
of cold drinks grew a lot during the mid nineteenth
se If we go back a bit to Frederick Tudor,
(25:03):
he's got an interesting story. Yeah. He got the idea
to get into the ice biz from a passing remark
from his brother about how nice it would be to
have an ice cold drink and ice cream on a
hot summer day. They were picnicking when he said this,
and Tudor was like Eurika and decided that they should
ship some ice down to the Caribbean. He reasoned once
(25:25):
people tried it, they wouldn't be able to go on
without it. The brothers were just about the only ones
who thought this was a good idea, though, no one
in the Boston area would transport the ice, so they
had to spend about five thousand dollars of their own
money to get their own ship. Their eighteen oh six
(25:46):
launch was met with this observation from the Boston Gazette.
No joke, A vessel with a cargo of eighty tons
of ice has cleared out from this port of Martinique.
We hope this will not prove to be a slippery speculation.
Oh you gotta give props or drops? Are new Lauren.
When the ice arrived to Martinique, none the worse for travel.
(26:09):
No one wanted it. No one wanted it, and Tudor's
brother left the business, leaving Frederick all by his lonesome.
A couple of trade embargoes and a dwindling fortune later,
he finally turned a profit in eighteen ten. However, his
fortune quickly cooled thanks to the weather dubbed ice famines, war,
(26:32):
and bailouts for some of his relatives. I like that
it's more one bailout. Yeah. Tudor ended up in Debtor's
prison three times during the span of eighteen oh nine
to eighteen thirteen, spent much of his time outside of
Debtor's prison avoiding the sheriff. He was determined, though, and
(26:53):
of this determination, the idea of get one free, of
giving away that free ice was born. Free ice just too.
Shipping improvements helped stacking the ice closer together, insulating with
sawdust instead of straw, and his business took off. Tudor
partnered with Nathaniel Wyeth, who got the idea to use
(27:13):
horse drawn plows to cut the ice along square grids.
Then laborers sawed these ice grids into blocks, which they
then floated downstream to be put up on a conveyor
belt that transported them to ice houses, which was.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Pretty ice farming.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't safe though, numb hands, sharp tools,
heavy towers of ice that slid and broke bones, something
called ice man's knees or knees that were covered in
bruises in blood after days on end of shoveling ice.
And it wasn't as profitable as they wanted it to be. Either.
Only ten percent of this ice was ever sold. Still,
(27:55):
Tudor kept pushing. He was once quoted as saying ice
would make him inevitably and unavoidably rich. Wow, he really
had his heart and heads set on this. He got
his ice King nickname after a shipment of one hundred
eighty tons of ice arrived in Calcutta in eighteen thirty three.
The British stations there loved the ice. Some even credited
(28:19):
the success of his shipment with reopening the trade route
between India and Boston. Oh wow. Queen Victoria reportedly loved
Tudor ice too, specifically Tudor ice, and had it shipped
from Boston rather than use what was more readily available
to her in Europe. Fifty two thousand tons of ice
made it to twenty eight US cities by eighteen forty seven,
(28:42):
either by ship our train, and over half of that
was Tudors. He had ice harvesting rights to most of
the ponds and Massachusetts, and Henry David Thereaux once wrote
about watching the ice harvesting. He was both annoyed and impressed.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
I feel like.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
That's the row in. Generally, Tudor's ice helped along innovations
in medicine and science as well. It impacted so many
industries like fishing and beer. Tudor died in eighteen sixty
four a rich man, and this is when the American
ice harvesting scene was at its most competitive. It was
(29:19):
one of the most powerful industries in the United States
at the dawn of the twentieth century. Prior to and
during the time of Tudor. By the way, there were
other methods of producing ice as salt and mineral acid
mixture by machine, but these methods were expensive and produced
lower quality ice, and were primarily used in areas where
getting ice was difficult, like polluted areas or the American
(29:41):
South during the Civil War. But let's jump to eighteen
forty four. Okay, all right. Looking to alleviate some of
the discomfort of his yellow fever patients in an American
position by the name of John Gory built a refrigerator
to cool the room they were housed in. It's possible
this is the first instance of an ice tray. Documentation
(30:03):
suggests that the patients received ice drinks. Australia's James Harrison
got a patent for an ice maker in eighteen fifty
five and Alexander Twinning or Twining of Connecticut patented one
in eighteen fifty three. We get Gustave's swift shipping chilled
beef as opposed to a living cows via train in
eighteen seventy eight.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
And around this time folks started developing technology to make
higher quality and commercially sustainable artificial ice. By the eighteen nineties,
the production of artificial ice was on the rise, such
that ice factories were being opened in the temperate American North,
in addition to the slightly longer standing businesses in the
South and down into South America. These factories were essentially
(30:45):
giant refrigerators with huge ice trays that would create blocks
of ice that weighed some three hundred and twenty pounds
like one hundred and forty five kilos over the course
of sixty days by circulating cold compressed gas through pipes
under the trays. The turn of the century, this artificial
ice was often cheaper than natural ice, even in the North,
(31:05):
and some considered it to be superior because it was
more like standardly compact the natural ice, which often has
layers with a bubbles or with softer packed crystals, and
the artificial stuff could be cleaner as well, because it
was made from distilled water rather than whatever happened to
show up in a lake.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Right. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
By that turn of the century, ice was widespread enough
and cheap enough that many Americans had an ice box
in their house. This is a precursor to the fridge.
It was sort of a wooden cabinet insulated with a
metal like a tin or zinc, with a place for
a big block of ice and a drip tray underneath.
You'd have blocks delivered frequently to replace them as they melted.
(31:44):
Iceman and during World War One, ice wimen made daily rounds.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
Yeah. In nineteen fourteen we get Fred Wolf's doll Marry,
which is probably just dome E LR, which was the
dome Stick electric refrigerator.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
And this was a fairly small device meant to be
put in ice boxes in the place of a block
of ice to keep the interior cool. But it wasn't
particularly affordable or reliable.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Right, And it was not a success, But it featured
a basic ice cube tray design that went on to
influence future designs, and as we enter the twenties and thirties,
most refrigerator manufacturers included an ice cube tray, So that's something. Yeah,
speaking of refrigerators, this was kind of the death knell
of the competitive ice harvesting industry in America. People could
(32:36):
just get ice at home and there wasn't really a
need to ship it across the country. And what about
dry ice?
Speaker 2 (32:43):
What about it?
Speaker 1 (32:44):
People knew it was a thing going all the way
back to eighteen thirty five, but nineteen twenty four is
the first year that someone Thomas Slat sold it. Something
only possible because of innovations leading to refrigerated rail cars.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Dry ice is a whole other episode.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
It is in also really fun if you're making an
exploding volcano cake. Then in nineteen twenty five we get
the Calvnator. This was the first refrigerator that came with
the self contained compressor and cooling system. It was named
for discoverer of absolute zero, Lord Kelvin. Also, one of
(33:19):
my favorite lame jokes from an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie is
when he kills absolute zero in Running Man and he
says absolute zero now plain zero. That was a really
good Arnold Swartzenegger. I'm impressed with myself. The first rubber
(33:40):
ice cube patent was filed in nineteen twenty eight by
Lloyd Groff, Copeman and Clarence Bird's Eye. I yes that
Clarence Bird's Eye sells his patent for frozen food to
General Foods Corporation in nineteen twenty nine. And you can
see our frozen food episode for so much more about that.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Beginning in nineteen thirty one, one frigid air fridges come
with free on. While it was safer than chemicals that
had been used previously, it was still not good for
the environment. It wasn't until the nineteen seventies that people
started raising the alarm about how bad this stuff was
for the planet. And this ice cube thing took another
(34:21):
step in nineteen thirty three when Guy Tinkham invented the
flexible stainless steel all metal ice tray that ejected ice
cubes by flexing sideways. The Maccord ice tray price fifty cents.
A year later, we get the first motorized ice shaving
machine thanks to Ernest Hanson, and.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Ice cubes were considered a quote delightful and trendy novelty
in the late thirties through the mid forties. According to
the Smithsonian Natural Museum of American history.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Another delightful and trendy novelty the Zambonies Zamboni. I don't
know how delightful and trendy it is, but I've feel
like it is. It debuted in nineteen forty nine and
this was the answer to the Zamboni family's ice block factory.
It flooded and they just had like an ice skating rink.
(35:13):
Well that's what they turned it into anyway. And then
when they were asking, well, what do we do now,
it's got all of these dents and rivets, and you
know what.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
They invented, the zambellis that's great.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
It is talk about turning what is it, like ice
water into ice skating rink? Yeah, something like that. Sure.
The ice maker refrigerator enters the market in nineteen fifty three,
and with round ice to boot, by the mid nineteen fifties,
eighty percent of Americans owned a refrigerator. Frigid Air comes
(35:50):
out with the first ice maker in the door refrigerator
in nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
At that point, ice makers and fridges were widespread, and
I suspect Frigid Air was looking to get a leg up.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
And then our most important fact of the episode, famous
ice lover. Mister Freeze graces the page of a Batman
comic for the first time in nineteen sixty six. That's critical,
very important to a food deep dive about ice. No,
it is, I mean.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
And also speaking of Arnold Schwarzenegger, you're right, oh.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
Yeah, okay, what's a good quote from in that movie
he says the ice age?
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Oh, Lauren, what is every single thing he says as
an ice pun? But mostly all I can remember is
the trailer with him going like, okay, everybody chill.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Well with that. We're gonna pause for a one more
quick break for word from our sponsor, and we're back.
Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you. And we spent that
ad break going over Arnold Swartzeneger quotes, and I realized
(37:04):
I misquoted the absolute zero quote. It's sub zero, So
don't write in about it.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Oh, they already did.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
You're right, they did, they did. But this brings us
to these are modern times, yes more or less. And
we got to talk about those fancy ice cubes that
you get in bars.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Yes, oh oh. I didn't go into the physics of
the sphery thing, the spiry thing. I'll do it in
another time. I'm sorry, no, we forgive you.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
It's a lot. As ice became more commonplace, so too
did it become more common to use in cocktails. And
certain cocktails called for certain types of ice, like shaved
for mint julips. There's lumps lumped ice for other drinks.
And this was already happening in eighteen hundreds, because we
have records of visitors commenting on the fantastic cocktail scene
(37:59):
in the United States and how ice was a part
of that. Then wham bam, thank you mam, prohibition so
all went away. It's taken this country a while to
bounce back from that, and also the dark pre mixed
drink days of the eighties. But starting with the new millennium,
bartenders really started getting into the art of the cocktail
(38:22):
again and ice is a part of that. But problem,
no one really harvest ice from frozen bodies of water anymore.
We get them and relatively the same shapes from refrigerators
or ice machines. Apparently this is known in the business
as hotel ice.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Specifically the kind of like quarter moon shaped ice cubes,
the rounded one side rounded ice cubes.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Yeah. Yeah, So new ice machines were developed capable of
producing larger, clearer ice cubes, but bartenders wanted more, more shapes,
clearer ice. If you make ice shapes using a commercial freezer,
they'll probably be cloudy.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
And that's because, Okay, first of all, water isn't one
hundred percent pure h two Outside of like laboratory settings.
Most of the time, the water from your faucet or
from a bottle may contain a reflex of dust or
minerals or plant remains or whatever, along with some dissolved
gases like oxygen and maybe minute air bubbles. When water freezes,
that debris can concentrate into clusters that impede and scatter light,
(39:25):
making otherwise clear ice look white and cloudy. That debris
is what causes ice cubes that you make at home
to be kind of hazy white in the middle. Most
ice makers and ice cube trays will freeze water from
the outside inward, which drives that gas and that debris
towards the center of the cube. Secondly, when water freezes quickly,
the crystals of ice that form tend to be super tiny,
(39:48):
and each crystal surfaces are reflective, So the more crystals
you have in your ice, the more incoming light will scatter,
and the cloudier your ice will look. So to get
clear ice, you need relatively little and you need to
let it freeze slowly. There are restaurant grade ice machines
will freeze water super gradually with the coldest temperatures concentrated
(40:10):
on one side of the ice, which lets the gas
and debris settle to the other end, which can be discarded.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
There are whole companies that specialize in producing clear ice,
like climb Bell that turns out three hundred pound blocks
of the stuff. In twenty ten, a bar in New
York boasted the first in house ice harvesting and production
because they had one of those machines in their basement.
But yeah, fancy bars are really into having these huge
blocks of ice delivered and then cutting them and molding
(40:39):
them into what they want for each individual drink. One
of my favorite restaurants in Atlanta, Iberian Pig, has these
huge chunks of clear ice that you can see them
cutting from.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
Yeah, right behind the bar. It always makes me very
nervous when a bartender busts out an ice pick, like
not for my safety, Like I mean, I'm sure that
they're holding themselves together more or less, but like, ah, man,
I'm always just like and you'll just all be careful
with your fingers. You need those.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Yeah. Our ads team here at work has a fancy
ice cube tray that they sort of tried to keep
secret and then the secret got out. But it's like
special occasion ice.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
I think by special occasion they mean like Friday.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
And if you want to make clear ice at home,
it's you know, it's not going to be perfect, but
you can try boiling the water first to drive out
any dissolved gases and then let it cool a bit
and add it to your ice cube tray. And I
wanted to end on a cultural note that I didn't
bother to spread throughout, but man, I'm kind of thinking
about it. I want to see if we can maybe
(41:43):
do a crossover with stuff to blow your mind, if
they haven't already done an episode like this, because y'all, like,
throughout the ages, folks have been fascinated by and terrified
of ice. Just for literature examples, in the thirteen hundred,
It's Dante wrote about the innermost circle of Hell being
frozen and Satan himself being chest deep frozen in ice.
(42:04):
In eighteen twenty three, Mary Shelley and doctor Frankenstein could
at the end only set their monster adrift in ice.
In nineteen thirty one, Lovecraft wrote about horrors preserved and
awoken in the Antarctic ice in the Mountains of Madness,
and within the same decade, an authored by the name
of John W. Campbell wrote a story with a similar
(42:24):
theme called Who Goes There, which would go on to
be adapted into film several times, including the nineteen eighty
two John Carpenter film The Thing, which recently got seql
and like a pretty good board game, We're still fascinated
by this stuff. And for a final ending ending a
quote here from a book called The Spiritual History of Ice, Romanticism,
(42:47):
Science and the Imagination by Juan Eric G. Wilson. Polar Terry, Incognide,
and other frozen shapes kill and cure. They blanched the
earth into a corpse. They translucently reveal life's vital core.
The whiteness of ice is the whiteness of the whale.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Oh give me chi chilling chills. You could also end
on the immortal words of mister Freeze. Allow me to
break the ice. My name is Freeze. Learn it well.
We're the chilling sound of your doom. Mmm.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
Both of these are very serious, very serious philosophical points.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
I haven't really considered it, but yeah, yes, both serious
philosophical points. But also, yeah, ice is it comes up
a lot in our entertainment and our culture.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
It is.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
It's such a fascinating food thing.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
It is. Oh and yeah, there's there's a lot of
physics that make it really cool. It's the it has
fifteen different crystal forms. Like a lot of things that
do make up crystal shapes can have a different type
of different formations of crystallization, but ice has fifteen. That's
like a lot, a lot. It's like more than two.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
It's a bunch, yes, a bunch a lot, several many.
And oh and like the.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Reason why ice is slippery is great, and oh there's.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
A lot there is.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
If I could just I would do another several episodes
about ice physics, if this were a physics show.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
But yeah, and I would just do bad Arnold Swartz
and Inger impressions and it would be I think, very
interesting SHOWR.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
Your ear impressions are great. Both of our impressions are
top notch.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
Oh, we should get nominated for something something best best impersonations,
send us suggestions about what nominations should get us invited for,
and that brings us to the end of this classic episode.
We hope that you enjoyed it for the first time.
(45:01):
Who knows how many times you've listened to it as
much as we enjoyed bringing it back. I would love
to hear about people's if you have, like your I
have those specialty Star Wars ice cube trays. You know,
what are your specialty ice cube trays? Oh, what's your
go to fancy ice cube? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (45:20):
And for what purpose? Like do you have different ice
cubes for different drinks, for different glasses? I mean, of
course for different glasses. You have to because you know,
like the format has to fit.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
Yes, I have a couple.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
I have a couple of rocks glasses that, like the
large cube will not really fit into, but the large
fear will fit into. So you know, you got to
know what you're working with exactly.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
This is very important. The last thing you want is
to you're ready to have your drink and you're going
for the ice cube and it doesn't fit. Yeah, that's no, no, no, no,
no no, So please write in and let us know.
You can email us at hello at saberpod dot com.
Speaker 2 (46:07):
We're also on social media. You can find us on
Instagram and blue Sky at saber pod and we do
hope to hear from you. Savre is production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, you can visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Thanks us always to our superproducers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard.
(46:28):
Thanks to you for listening, and we hope that lots
more good things are coming your way
Hello, and welcome to Savor Prediction of iHeart Video. I'm
Annie Reese and I'm.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Lauren vocal Bum and today we have a classic episode
for you about ice like frozen water.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Yes. Was there any particular reason this was on your mind? Lauren?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
You know, I was going through our backlog and I
was like, that one was a really interesting episode, and
then I listened to it and I was like, oh,
it was, yeah, and so here we are.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
That one was a really interesting one. It's one of
the things that I think a lot of people me
included take for granted ice.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Oh absolutely, and just like exactly where refrigeration technology has
taken us and how important it is to not only
you know, like like our health and well being, but
just just a lot of things about our daily life
depend upon it. And it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
It is.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Our food ways were irrevocably changed and we can have
more medicine and stuff like that, and that's terrific.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah, it's usually a pretty consistent timeline element in the
history of like and then refrigeration. Yep. Yeah, it really
did change things. But we were we were quite young
when we recorded this.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
We were this was pretty early on, but I think
it's I think it's still a solid episode.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Mm hmmm, mm hmm. This one was an interesting one
to come back to because times have changed since we
recorded it, and now I don't know how to feel
when I hear the word ice anymore.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
But yeah, yeah, it's real weird listening to our perhaps
more innocent selves tossing the word ice around with just
no cares in the world. And I guess the only
thing that we're going to say about that here is
that we deeply respect and appreciate our immigrant communities. You know,
(02:22):
not only because they sometimes share their amazing food and
food ways with us. That part is nice, but you know,
just as human beings. We like human beings.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Yeah, and that's the thing about food that we make
the point on here so often is that connection, right,
That sharing community part is so important. If you would
like to know more about ICE, the government agency and
how we got to hear the other show I'm On
(02:56):
Stuff whe Never Told You has a four part mini
series on that can check that out.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah, in this episode, you say that you don't really
enjoy having beverages with icy.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Still do not, No, I know that has not changed.
I do like really cool beverages though, okay, like not
cold but really cool.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Interesting, all right.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
I know people with their temperature preferences when it comes
to beverages and food I find fascinating.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Oh yeah, like I will put I'm the kind of
guy who puts like extra ice into a beverage in order,
like at the risk of watering it down to get
it extra cold, because sometimes under the right circumstance, I
just want it to be yeah, very chilly.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Mm hmmm. Yeah again, I feel like it's on the
same plain to me, is the texture preference thing that
people have?
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, imature preference. Yeah. I'll also like
microwave a cold cup of coffee. I know it changes
the flavor. I'm a beast, It's okay. And then if
it gets a little too hot during that microwave session,
I'll pop an ice cube in there. You're going through
(04:18):
multiple stages, and listening to this episode makes me feel
like I am some kind of royalty to be able
to do that.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
But now it's too hot, we must get the ice.
You know, you have your preferences.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Yeah, we have the technology.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
Exactly, and you can learn more about how in this episode. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Yeah, so without further ado, Let's let former Annie and
Lauren take it away. Hello, and welcome to Savor. I'm
Annie Reas and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. And today we're talking
about ice.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yes, and this is one of those things I can't
have because of my tooth.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Oh really?
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Oh man? Yeah? But I actually, I mean did not
like ice before that. Oh really no, I thought it
was taking out space that could be used for more drink.
Oh waist. I like cold.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
I mean I lived for like fourteen years in Florida too,
so ice was pretty important to my lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
I like a chill drink without ice. Ah.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Does this impact your cocktail decisions? Like, if you're at
a cocktail bar, do you specifically try to order straight
up drinks rather than on the rocks drinks?
Speaker 1 (05:44):
I do like straight up drinks better, but I also
appreciate that rocks slow you down in the case of
alcohol specifically, like, that's two different nights that I might
be aiming to have I see you. But despite all
of this, I have an embarrassment of riches when it
comes to ice molds. I've got, like any Star Wars
thing you can't imagine, the millennium falcon is my favorite.
(06:05):
I got the spherical thing, the big cube thing. I'm
not sure why.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
I love a big cube.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Who doesn't love a big cube? All right? Show us
that person, please? All right. It all brings us to
our question ice. What is it?
Speaker 2 (06:27):
Well? Ice is frozen water?
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Done and done? Yep? Cool. Well, now that that's that
we're with.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Now, No, the technical details that go into ice being
frozen water are really fascinating. I promise you're making a
face like you don't entirely believe me. But okay, let's
break this down a little bit.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Follow along.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Okay, all right, first, basic physics review. Any given substance
has a temperature at which it's solid, at which it's liquid,
and at which it's gas.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Right.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Yeah, there's also plasma and like a few weird ones,
but most of those are not going to get served
to you in your glass of root beer. So let's
concentrate for now.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
If you apply increasing energy to a solid like plastic
or iron, the molecules in it will become increasingly energetic.
They'll break structural bonds among each other and start sluicing around.
And that's that's a liquid. Uh huh uh huh. Apply
even more energy to that liquid, and the molecules will
get even more energetic. They'll break apart entirely and float off.
(07:29):
That's a gas, and heat is energy, or the transfer
of energy from one object to another. But yeah, so okay,
if you've got water, that's a bunch of molecules of
H two O hanging out with each other. H two Oh,
that's a two hydrogen atoms stuck to an oxygen atom,
sort of like a mickey mouse head.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
I never thought of it. Yeah, yeah, no, that's.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Basically what it looks like under normal Earth circumstances from
between the temperatures of about zero to one hundred celsius
or thirty two to two hundred and twelve fahrenheigh. The
hydrogen atoms in those hto molecules are constantly making and
breaking loose bonds with each other. They're slushing.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Oh my gosh, you look so scandalized. I am scandalized,
sloshing my skinness.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
But okay, so you apply heat above that upper point,
they'll break those bonds and escape as water vapor into
the air. And if you remove energy to blow that
lower point, the molecules will slow down so much that
the hydrogen atoms lock up with each other in these
fascinatingly orderly repeating patterns called crystals. Water molecules take up
(08:45):
more space locked together as crystals than they do as
a liquid, which is a why water expands as it
freezes and b why ice floats in water. It's the
same mass but less dense. And physically speaking, when you
put ice in drink, you're not making the drink cold,
You're making the ice warm until it melts back into water.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
You are blowing my mind, Lauren, blowing my mind?
Speaker 2 (09:13):
What about what about nutrition?
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Though? Well, the average ice cube, I believe has two
seven hundred and thirty eight calories, So watch out. No,
it's it's water.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
So it's made of water.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
It's made of water, unless you're making ice out of espresso,
which I do recommend, and your coffee not in your water? Ooh,
are like pickle juice circulate that? Then that's different. But
we're talking about water ice. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
And also there's like a lot more than I could
have said about ice physics up there. But I'm this
is a food show.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
It is. And one of the things that I kept
running into on this episode that I love about ice
is I mean think about ice skating and ice sculpture.
There's so many non food things that ice is involved in.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
But I think we should do an episode on ice
sculpture at some point because it is food and hospitality.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Related, it's adjacent.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
It's a yes enough, so I think it deserves its
own episode.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Oh, I'm in I was sort of bummed when I
didn't get to research it too much. There's a little
bit about ice sculpture in here. But Americans love ice,
and we have probably heard I've definitely heard when you're
traveling in different countries not to expect as much ice
and drinks, and that has been my experience. Again, I'm
(10:37):
totally on board with this, but a lot of people
I travel with we're not so happy about it. The
ice industry makes a cool two point five billion dollars annually,
and most of that comes from the prepackaged stuff you
find in those like beer coolers and stores.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Sure, the word ice in its modern English spelling dates
from the fourteen hundreds, which is like a surprisingly long
time for a word to have survived in a in
a single spelling, but the sound of the word actually
dates back to Proto Germanic, which is also just a
very long time. Yeah for a word ho stuck around.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
I love that it is. I also love as it
is clear novelty ice shapes.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
I was trying to remember.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Was it Virgin Atlantic flights that had those ice cube
shaped like Richard Branson's head. I'm pretty sure that's true.
But that's beautiful. Can you imagine having like a mold
of your own face for ice cubes for people on
a plane that you own for them to enjoy.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
I hadn't imagined that previously, but now now I'm thinking
of it, and I like it the more that I
think about it.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
It's resolution season, Lauren. You could make a goal. You
could make a goal.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
I believe three D printing could make this dream come true.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
I think it could, and we have access. But anyway,
there's a lot of shapes out there. There's smiley faces,
goldfish teeth, shark fins, legos, snowflake stars, skulls, fossil ships,
robots and guns because freeze, get it, graz because freeze,
get it. Beans meant to be used with coffee as
in cool beans, get it, those shotglasses, icicles for wine.
(12:07):
So many options out there.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
It's a beautiful ice scape.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
It is, or a frozen healthscape. I just like saying
frozen healthscape. It's a good term.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
I wanted to put a note in here about refrigerators
and freezers, kind of mixing in with the physics, but
also in a transition sort of way, because these are
amazing machines that transfer heat from the inside of a
box to the outside of that box. Thus they regulate
the temperature on the inside of that box and keep
it relatively low compared with the air around the box.
(12:42):
I don't usually think about it, but it really is
just awesome. Yeah, and it's not only awesome because cold
things are fun to eat. As it turns out, most
bacteria that cause disease in humans, that is, pathogenic bacteria
go into a hibernation of sorts below about forty degrees
fahrenheit aka four point four celsius or wherein they're not reproducing,
(13:04):
and that's why we keep our fridges at or below
that temperature. However, many non pathogenic bacteria and other microorganisms
can grow at those temperatures, and some of them like
eating our food as much as we do, which is
what causes food to spoil. As we've said before on
the show, microorganisms are eating your food before you get
a chance to causing unpleasant flavors and textures. But even
(13:28):
they will go into hibernation or maybe even die off
when you bring food down to around thirty two fahrenheit
or zero celsius, because that's the temperature at which water freezes,
and microbes generally need liquid water to survive just as
much as we do. For a long time, ice cubes
weren't just a thing to put in drinks. They were
(13:48):
one of the only things that could keep your food
safe to eat for more than a couple hours. And
we'll get into the history of that right after we
get back from a quick break for a word from
our sponsor, and we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you. So.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
American rapper and actor Ice Cube was born as O'sha
Jackson in nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Oh wait, yeah, I mean also a good ice cube
to talk about.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
He has a good ice cube to talk about. Thank
you for coming along on this slame joke with me.
All right, So ice has been around for a long
long time, but humans harvesting ice is not quite as old.
It's so old, but not quite as long comparatively, right, Yeah,
(14:45):
In some northern areas where ice is easier to come by,
hunter gatherers were harvesting ice earlier than other people, primarily
for preservation and storage. Hunters in icy regions would use
the ice as a way to make the meat from
and their kills keep for longer periods. They might not
have known why this worked precisely that they knew that
(15:07):
it did. In some cases, when any leftover kill was
buried to hide it from predators or other hunters and
the conditions were right, they were essentially freezing food. Sometimes
this happened via totally unavoidable accident. It was just that
cold gonna happen. Natural caves or insulated underground pits are
(15:28):
chambers were popular ways to keep things like grains chilly
and preserved. Ice pits existed four thousand years ago in Mesopotamia.
Evidence suggest the Chinese were harvesting and storing ice by
one one hundred BCE, and this ice might be transported
for several miles. The upper class in ancient civilizations like Persia, Rome, Greece,
(15:51):
and Egypt, who could afford to paid someone to go
up a mountain and get ice and or snow, used
it in drinks chilled fruits and frozen desserts like flavored
ices no matter the weather, and tea, which has been
around for quite some time, as see our tea episode
for that. Yes Yes, was one of the first flavored
(16:12):
drinks to be ice. Also lemonadeh early lemonade. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
In Persia in particular by around four hundred BCE that
worked out how to create ice through the fascinating physics
of nocturnal cooling.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Ooh, nocturnal cool nocturnal cooling.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Okay, yeah, yeah, So this is a way to make
artificial ice, to make man made ice, in which you're
taking advantage of this natural thing that just happens to
make ice overnight, even when the ambient air temperature is
well above freezing. So Persia's cities, even in deserts, were
serviced by these underground canals, and to make this ice,
(16:53):
they would make these wide, shallow pits or channels that
were protected by tall walls from daytime sun and nighttime
wind and fill them with just a couple inches of
water overnight. Because the open sky is very cold when
the sun isn't hitting it, heat would radiate up out
of the water into the sky and by the early
hours of the morning, the water would freeze. It can
(17:16):
be like forty degrees fahrenheit outside, like four point five
celsius or more and this will work.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
The surface area of the pans er channels also helps it.
As water evaporates into the air. It takes a bit
more heat energy to do it. And they had these
domed buildings to store the ice in during warmer times
that were highly insulated, vented at the top, built over
these cool pits. It was amazing technology for the time.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
That sounds pretty amazing. That's another thing that I didn't
get to look into. But things like a glose of
ice has so many uses. It does it does?
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Oh is hotels?
Speaker 1 (17:52):
Iso tell I've been through an ice bar. Yeah, all
these memories are flooding back. Oh my goodness, I was
in China. It was so cold.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Anyway, you're already like you run, yeah, like you're chilly
all the time.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Yeah. There's usually some gloves and a scarf involved in
this podcasting.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Oh yeah, she's been in here in like a parka.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Yeah, still cold. I had fun though at the ice bar.
But back to the history. Yes, in the Mediterranean, snow
harvested from the mountains was sold per day are stored
in pits that were covered with branches, leafmets, or cloth.
While Alexander the Great was in Petra, he oversaw the
(18:35):
digging of trenches that were then filled with snow and
covered with branches so that his soldiers could enjoy it
chilled wine in the summer. How kind, Yeah, chilled wine
very important. Snow and ice weren't just used for food
and drink and food storage. Early physicians also used ice
(18:56):
to treat all sorts of ailments, many that we still
use ice for today, like inflammation and fever. But when
the Roman Empire fell, so too did ice for popularity,
and it wasn't until like the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
that it started to kind of come back onto the scene.
Ice harvested from Lebanon's mountains was shipped to Cairo to
(19:18):
be enjoyed by Egyptian royalty. Around this time, ice sculptures
started to enter the elegant party scene as a centerpiece
at banquets, and if we look at Europe, Italians often
get the credit for reintroducing ice to that continent, followed
swiftly by the French. But the French were doing it
more as a show of well so were the Italian
(19:39):
They both were, like the case of Henry the Third,
who impressed his guest with tables piled high with snow
and dice. However, many Europeans turned up their noses at
the idea of chill drinks. One quote from the time
described it as a mark of excessive and effeminate luxury.
(20:00):
Huh yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
How Indeed, over on the Indian subcontinent, by the mid
to late sixteenth century, some of the also not unshowy
royalty of the Mughal Empire were having ice harvested in
the Himalayas and carted down daily, as ice drenths and
desserts were very vogue, and also it's just hot as
all get out during the summer, and a lot of
(20:23):
cities that the royalty were hanging out in in times
when that was too expensive or just as a supplement,
their ice cellars would be filled up with ice created
through the aforementioned nocturnal cooling. And some of the reports
I was reading about it, they had a great system
set up, Like outside of the cities in open fields,
they had these shallow beds dug lined with us straw
or other dried plant waste for insulation, and on cold,
(20:46):
clear still nights, a whole team of workers would be
called with like vocal calls or music to come fill
earthenware pans and enter too deep with water and fit
them into the beds, and in the morning they would
pack the ice into the cellars.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Is pretty amazing good system indeed.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Well maybe not for the workers.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
No fruit ice.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Yes, productive system.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
That's a good word. Around the same time, many of
the well to do in Europe, the Middle East, and
China had ice houses, from palaces and estates to monasteries
and abbey's. I'm starting to think the well off people
in this time in these areas just had a lot
of houses. You got your pineapple house, you got your orangerie,
you got your ice house. Just a very specific little
(21:30):
house for whatever, for whatever thing you want to show
off that you could not only get, but could make
a house for. Of course, they did have to show
off these things even more, and by eighteenth century the
architecture of these ice houses had gotten quite showy, featuring
things like Grecian pillars or Gothic archways. These ice houses
(21:51):
were almost solely used for ice. At first makes sense,
but not until later did people start to view them
as we might a refrigerator as a place to store food. Yeah, however,
ice had become more commonplace by this time. They might
not have had ice houses, but peasants in Europe were
known to have little stacks of ice constructed out of branches, leaves,
and heather for installation. Yeah yeah, yeah, and they would
(22:14):
put these structures near water that froze during the winter time.
During the nineteenth century Europe, in places where warm and
mild winters failed to produce ice, merchants that depended on
ice for business, like butchers, would scramble to buy ice
from Greenland's cargo ships of ice. Archaeological evidence indicates that
ice pits were present in Jamestown, Virginia, all the way
(22:37):
back in the seventeenth century, as the colonists brought the
European proclivity for chill drinks and ice desserts with them.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
And the technology of these little makeshift ice houses.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Yeah right. To get this ice, ice harvesters would cut
it from frozen bodies of water in the winter and
store it in these pits or cellars during the rest
of the year.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
They also might have built huts over these cellars to
a prevent loss of cool air and be to keep
perishable items in like meat and milk.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
By eighteenth century, the pits and cellars were improved upon
with the ice house, which was used for chilling food
and drink and making ice cream. Ice cream comes up
all the time in the history of ice and storing ice.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Two These were more formal sellers that were reinforced by
stone lining and topped with more elaborate buildings.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Yes, and two people who had probably very elaborate buildings
Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, who both had ice houses.
One of the first advertisements for ice was published in
Philadelphia in seventeen ninety nine. Europeans visiting the northern United
States in the seventeen nineties reported Americans drinking iced water
(23:42):
and that hotels employed buckets of ice to cool down
their room. The first cargo shipment of ice made the
journey from New York to Charleston, South Carolina, also in
seventeen ninety nine, and one fellow out of Boston, Frederick Tudor,
made quite a lot of money shipping ice harvested from
Massachusetts overseas. Between eighteen oh five and eighteen sixty over
(24:06):
twelve thousand tons of ice. His nickname the ice cream.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Like from Adventure Time?
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Is that his name it is, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (24:15):
I think so?
Speaker 1 (24:16):
The ice gaing ice care. It's like game of throw.
It could be, you know, depending on the move that
you're in. He pushed for the construction of ice chest.
He sent sales agents out to encourage businesses to sell
ice cream with an ice chest. Sung the praises of
ice for preserving food. Helped popularize the sale of fizzy water,
(24:40):
and he gave any bar owner that agreed to sell
iced drinks at the same price as warm ones a
year's worth of free ice oooh oh tricksy yes, And
perhaps in part due to this, the market and popularity
of cold drinks grew a lot during the mid nineteenth
se If we go back a bit to Frederick Tudor,
(25:03):
he's got an interesting story. Yeah. He got the idea
to get into the ice biz from a passing remark
from his brother about how nice it would be to
have an ice cold drink and ice cream on a
hot summer day. They were picnicking when he said this,
and Tudor was like Eurika and decided that they should
ship some ice down to the Caribbean. He reasoned once
(25:25):
people tried it, they wouldn't be able to go on
without it. The brothers were just about the only ones
who thought this was a good idea, though, no one
in the Boston area would transport the ice, so they
had to spend about five thousand dollars of their own
money to get their own ship. Their eighteen oh six
(25:46):
launch was met with this observation from the Boston Gazette.
No joke, A vessel with a cargo of eighty tons
of ice has cleared out from this port of Martinique.
We hope this will not prove to be a slippery speculation.
Oh you gotta give props or drops? Are new Lauren.
When the ice arrived to Martinique, none the worse for travel.
(26:09):
No one wanted it. No one wanted it, and Tudor's
brother left the business, leaving Frederick all by his lonesome.
A couple of trade embargoes and a dwindling fortune later,
he finally turned a profit in eighteen ten. However, his
fortune quickly cooled thanks to the weather dubbed ice famines, war,
(26:32):
and bailouts for some of his relatives. I like that
it's more one bailout. Yeah. Tudor ended up in Debtor's
prison three times during the span of eighteen oh nine
to eighteen thirteen, spent much of his time outside of
Debtor's prison avoiding the sheriff. He was determined, though, and
(26:53):
of this determination, the idea of get one free, of
giving away that free ice was born. Free ice just too.
Shipping improvements helped stacking the ice closer together, insulating with
sawdust instead of straw, and his business took off. Tudor
partnered with Nathaniel Wyeth, who got the idea to use
(27:13):
horse drawn plows to cut the ice along square grids.
Then laborers sawed these ice grids into blocks, which they
then floated downstream to be put up on a conveyor
belt that transported them to ice houses, which was.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Pretty ice farming.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't safe though, numb hands, sharp tools,
heavy towers of ice that slid and broke bones, something
called ice man's knees or knees that were covered in
bruises in blood after days on end of shoveling ice.
And it wasn't as profitable as they wanted it to be. Either.
Only ten percent of this ice was ever sold. Still,
(27:55):
Tudor kept pushing. He was once quoted as saying ice
would make him inevitably and unavoidably rich. Wow, he really
had his heart and heads set on this. He got
his ice King nickname after a shipment of one hundred
eighty tons of ice arrived in Calcutta in eighteen thirty three.
The British stations there loved the ice. Some even credited
(28:19):
the success of his shipment with reopening the trade route
between India and Boston. Oh wow. Queen Victoria reportedly loved
Tudor ice too, specifically Tudor ice, and had it shipped
from Boston rather than use what was more readily available
to her in Europe. Fifty two thousand tons of ice
made it to twenty eight US cities by eighteen forty seven,
(28:42):
either by ship our train, and over half of that
was Tudors. He had ice harvesting rights to most of
the ponds and Massachusetts, and Henry David Thereaux once wrote
about watching the ice harvesting. He was both annoyed and impressed.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
I feel like.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
That's the row in. Generally, Tudor's ice helped along innovations
in medicine and science as well. It impacted so many
industries like fishing and beer. Tudor died in eighteen sixty
four a rich man, and this is when the American
ice harvesting scene was at its most competitive. It was
(29:19):
one of the most powerful industries in the United States
at the dawn of the twentieth century. Prior to and
during the time of Tudor. By the way, there were
other methods of producing ice as salt and mineral acid
mixture by machine, but these methods were expensive and produced
lower quality ice, and were primarily used in areas where
getting ice was difficult, like polluted areas or the American
(29:41):
South during the Civil War. But let's jump to eighteen
forty four. Okay, all right. Looking to alleviate some of
the discomfort of his yellow fever patients in an American
position by the name of John Gory built a refrigerator
to cool the room they were housed in. It's possible
this is the first instance of an ice tray. Documentation
(30:03):
suggests that the patients received ice drinks. Australia's James Harrison
got a patent for an ice maker in eighteen fifty
five and Alexander Twinning or Twining of Connecticut patented one
in eighteen fifty three. We get Gustave's swift shipping chilled
beef as opposed to a living cows via train in
eighteen seventy eight.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
And around this time folks started developing technology to make
higher quality and commercially sustainable artificial ice. By the eighteen nineties,
the production of artificial ice was on the rise, such
that ice factories were being opened in the temperate American North,
in addition to the slightly longer standing businesses in the
South and down into South America. These factories were essentially
(30:45):
giant refrigerators with huge ice trays that would create blocks
of ice that weighed some three hundred and twenty pounds
like one hundred and forty five kilos over the course
of sixty days by circulating cold compressed gas through pipes
under the trays. The turn of the century, this artificial
ice was often cheaper than natural ice, even in the North,
(31:05):
and some considered it to be superior because it was
more like standardly compact the natural ice, which often has
layers with a bubbles or with softer packed crystals, and
the artificial stuff could be cleaner as well, because it
was made from distilled water rather than whatever happened to
show up in a lake.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
Right. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:22):
By that turn of the century, ice was widespread enough
and cheap enough that many Americans had an ice box
in their house. This is a precursor to the fridge.
It was sort of a wooden cabinet insulated with a
metal like a tin or zinc, with a place for
a big block of ice and a drip tray underneath.
You'd have blocks delivered frequently to replace them as they melted.
(31:44):
Iceman and during World War One, ice wimen made daily rounds.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
Yeah. In nineteen fourteen we get Fred Wolf's doll Marry,
which is probably just dome E LR, which was the
dome Stick electric refrigerator.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
And this was a fairly small device meant to be
put in ice boxes in the place of a block
of ice to keep the interior cool. But it wasn't
particularly affordable or reliable.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
Right, And it was not a success, But it featured
a basic ice cube tray design that went on to
influence future designs, and as we enter the twenties and thirties,
most refrigerator manufacturers included an ice cube tray, So that's something. Yeah,
speaking of refrigerators, this was kind of the death knell
of the competitive ice harvesting industry in America. People could
(32:36):
just get ice at home and there wasn't really a
need to ship it across the country. And what about
dry ice?
Speaker 2 (32:43):
What about it?
Speaker 1 (32:44):
People knew it was a thing going all the way
back to eighteen thirty five, but nineteen twenty four is
the first year that someone Thomas Slat sold it. Something
only possible because of innovations leading to refrigerated rail cars.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Dry ice is a whole other episode.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
It is in also really fun if you're making an
exploding volcano cake. Then in nineteen twenty five we get
the Calvnator. This was the first refrigerator that came with
the self contained compressor and cooling system. It was named
for discoverer of absolute zero, Lord Kelvin. Also, one of
(33:19):
my favorite lame jokes from an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie is
when he kills absolute zero in Running Man and he
says absolute zero now plain zero. That was a really
good Arnold Swartzenegger. I'm impressed with myself. The first rubber
(33:40):
ice cube patent was filed in nineteen twenty eight by
Lloyd Groff, Copeman and Clarence Bird's Eye. I yes that
Clarence Bird's Eye sells his patent for frozen food to
General Foods Corporation in nineteen twenty nine. And you can
see our frozen food episode for so much more about that.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Beginning in nineteen thirty one, one frigid air fridges come
with free on. While it was safer than chemicals that
had been used previously, it was still not good for
the environment. It wasn't until the nineteen seventies that people
started raising the alarm about how bad this stuff was
for the planet. And this ice cube thing took another
(34:21):
step in nineteen thirty three when Guy Tinkham invented the
flexible stainless steel all metal ice tray that ejected ice
cubes by flexing sideways. The Maccord ice tray price fifty cents.
A year later, we get the first motorized ice shaving
machine thanks to Ernest Hanson, and.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Ice cubes were considered a quote delightful and trendy novelty
in the late thirties through the mid forties. According to
the Smithsonian Natural Museum of American history.
Speaker 1 (34:53):
Another delightful and trendy novelty the Zambonies Zamboni. I don't
know how delightful and trendy it is, but I've feel
like it is. It debuted in nineteen forty nine and
this was the answer to the Zamboni family's ice block factory.
It flooded and they just had like an ice skating rink.
(35:13):
Well that's what they turned it into anyway. And then
when they were asking, well, what do we do now,
it's got all of these dents and rivets, and you
know what.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
They invented, the zambellis that's great.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
It is talk about turning what is it, like ice
water into ice skating rink? Yeah, something like that. Sure.
The ice maker refrigerator enters the market in nineteen fifty three,
and with round ice to boot, by the mid nineteen fifties,
eighty percent of Americans owned a refrigerator. Frigid Air comes
(35:50):
out with the first ice maker in the door refrigerator
in nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
At that point, ice makers and fridges were widespread, and
I suspect Frigid Air was looking to get a leg up.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
And then our most important fact of the episode, famous
ice lover. Mister Freeze graces the page of a Batman
comic for the first time in nineteen sixty six. That's critical,
very important to a food deep dive about ice. No,
it is, I mean.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
And also speaking of Arnold Schwarzenegger, you're right, oh.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
Yeah, okay, what's a good quote from in that movie
he says the ice age?
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Oh, Lauren, what is every single thing he says as
an ice pun? But mostly all I can remember is
the trailer with him going like, okay, everybody chill.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Well with that. We're gonna pause for a one more
quick break for word from our sponsor, and we're back.
Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you. And we spent that
ad break going over Arnold Swartzeneger quotes, and I realized
(37:04):
I misquoted the absolute zero quote. It's sub zero, So
don't write in about it.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
Oh, they already did.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
You're right, they did, they did. But this brings us
to these are modern times, yes more or less. And
we got to talk about those fancy ice cubes that
you get in bars.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Yes, oh oh. I didn't go into the physics of
the sphery thing, the spiry thing. I'll do it in
another time. I'm sorry, no, we forgive you.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
It's a lot. As ice became more commonplace, so too
did it become more common to use in cocktails. And
certain cocktails called for certain types of ice, like shaved
for mint julips. There's lumps lumped ice for other drinks.
And this was already happening in eighteen hundreds, because we
have records of visitors commenting on the fantastic cocktail scene
(37:59):
in the United States and how ice was a part
of that. Then wham bam, thank you mam, prohibition so
all went away. It's taken this country a while to
bounce back from that, and also the dark pre mixed
drink days of the eighties. But starting with the new millennium,
bartenders really started getting into the art of the cocktail
(38:22):
again and ice is a part of that. But problem,
no one really harvest ice from frozen bodies of water anymore.
We get them and relatively the same shapes from refrigerators
or ice machines. Apparently this is known in the business
as hotel ice.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Specifically the kind of like quarter moon shaped ice cubes,
the rounded one side rounded ice cubes.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
Yeah. Yeah, So new ice machines were developed capable of
producing larger, clearer ice cubes, but bartenders wanted more, more shapes,
clearer ice. If you make ice shapes using a commercial freezer,
they'll probably be cloudy.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
And that's because, Okay, first of all, water isn't one
hundred percent pure h two Outside of like laboratory settings.
Most of the time, the water from your faucet or
from a bottle may contain a reflex of dust or
minerals or plant remains or whatever, along with some dissolved
gases like oxygen and maybe minute air bubbles. When water freezes,
that debris can concentrate into clusters that impede and scatter light,
(39:25):
making otherwise clear ice look white and cloudy. That debris
is what causes ice cubes that you make at home
to be kind of hazy white in the middle. Most
ice makers and ice cube trays will freeze water from
the outside inward, which drives that gas and that debris
towards the center of the cube. Secondly, when water freezes quickly,
the crystals of ice that form tend to be super tiny,
(39:48):
and each crystal surfaces are reflective, So the more crystals
you have in your ice, the more incoming light will scatter,
and the cloudier your ice will look. So to get
clear ice, you need relatively little and you need to
let it freeze slowly. There are restaurant grade ice machines
will freeze water super gradually with the coldest temperatures concentrated
(40:10):
on one side of the ice, which lets the gas
and debris settle to the other end, which can be discarded.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
There are whole companies that specialize in producing clear ice,
like climb Bell that turns out three hundred pound blocks
of the stuff. In twenty ten, a bar in New
York boasted the first in house ice harvesting and production
because they had one of those machines in their basement.
But yeah, fancy bars are really into having these huge
blocks of ice delivered and then cutting them and molding
(40:39):
them into what they want for each individual drink. One
of my favorite restaurants in Atlanta, Iberian Pig, has these
huge chunks of clear ice that you can see them
cutting from.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
Yeah, right behind the bar. It always makes me very
nervous when a bartender busts out an ice pick, like
not for my safety, Like I mean, I'm sure that
they're holding themselves together more or less, but like, ah, man,
I'm always just like and you'll just all be careful
with your fingers. You need those.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
Yeah. Our ads team here at work has a fancy
ice cube tray that they sort of tried to keep
secret and then the secret got out. But it's like
special occasion ice.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
I think by special occasion they mean like Friday.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
And if you want to make clear ice at home,
it's you know, it's not going to be perfect, but
you can try boiling the water first to drive out
any dissolved gases and then let it cool a bit
and add it to your ice cube tray. And I
wanted to end on a cultural note that I didn't
bother to spread throughout, but man, I'm kind of thinking
about it. I want to see if we can maybe
(41:43):
do a crossover with stuff to blow your mind, if
they haven't already done an episode like this, because y'all, like,
throughout the ages, folks have been fascinated by and terrified
of ice. Just for literature examples, in the thirteen hundred,
It's Dante wrote about the innermost circle of Hell being
frozen and Satan himself being chest deep frozen in ice.
(42:04):
In eighteen twenty three, Mary Shelley and doctor Frankenstein could
at the end only set their monster adrift in ice.
In nineteen thirty one, Lovecraft wrote about horrors preserved and
awoken in the Antarctic ice in the Mountains of Madness,
and within the same decade, an authored by the name
of John W. Campbell wrote a story with a similar
(42:24):
theme called Who Goes There, which would go on to
be adapted into film several times, including the nineteen eighty
two John Carpenter film The Thing, which recently got seql
and like a pretty good board game, We're still fascinated
by this stuff. And for a final ending ending a
quote here from a book called The Spiritual History of Ice, Romanticism,
(42:47):
Science and the Imagination by Juan Eric G. Wilson. Polar Terry, Incognide,
and other frozen shapes kill and cure. They blanched the
earth into a corpse. They translucently reveal life's vital core.
The whiteness of ice is the whiteness of the whale.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
Oh give me chi chilling chills. You could also end
on the immortal words of mister Freeze. Allow me to
break the ice. My name is Freeze. Learn it well.
We're the chilling sound of your doom. Mmm.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
Both of these are very serious, very serious philosophical points.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
I haven't really considered it, but yeah, yes, both serious
philosophical points. But also, yeah, ice is it comes up
a lot in our entertainment and our culture.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
It is.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
It's such a fascinating food thing.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
It is. Oh and yeah, there's there's a lot of
physics that make it really cool. It's the it has
fifteen different crystal forms. Like a lot of things that
do make up crystal shapes can have a different type
of different formations of crystallization, but ice has fifteen. That's
like a lot, a lot. It's like more than two.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
It's a bunch, yes, a bunch a lot, several many.
And oh and like the.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Reason why ice is slippery is great, and oh there's.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
A lot there is.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
If I could just I would do another several episodes
about ice physics, if this were a physics show.
Speaker 1 (44:23):
But yeah, and I would just do bad Arnold Swartz
and Inger impressions and it would be I think, very
interesting SHOWR.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
Your ear impressions are great. Both of our impressions are
top notch.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
Oh, we should get nominated for something something best best impersonations,
send us suggestions about what nominations should get us invited for,
and that brings us to the end of this classic episode.
We hope that you enjoyed it for the first time.
(45:01):
Who knows how many times you've listened to it as
much as we enjoyed bringing it back. I would love
to hear about people's if you have, like your I
have those specialty Star Wars ice cube trays. You know,
what are your specialty ice cube trays? Oh, what's your
go to fancy ice cube? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (45:20):
And for what purpose? Like do you have different ice
cubes for different drinks, for different glasses? I mean, of
course for different glasses. You have to because you know,
like the format has to fit.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
Yes, I have a couple.
Speaker 2 (45:35):
I have a couple of rocks glasses that, like the
large cube will not really fit into, but the large
fear will fit into. So you know, you got to
know what you're working with exactly.
Speaker 1 (45:47):
This is very important. The last thing you want is
to you're ready to have your drink and you're going
for the ice cube and it doesn't fit. Yeah, that's no, no, no, no,
no no, So please write in and let us know.
You can email us at hello at saberpod dot com.
Speaker 2 (46:07):
We're also on social media. You can find us on
Instagram and blue Sky at saber pod and we do
hope to hear from you. Savre is production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, you can visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Thanks us always to our superproducers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard.
(46:28):
Thanks to you for listening, and we hope that lots
more good things are coming your way
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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