Did the Chinese invent ice cream?

Question

Some scholars told me a few months ago. I remember I couldn't find anything on it on the internet...maybe I just didn't search hard enough. I wouldn't be surprised if the Chinese did invent ice cream. They practically invented everything else...at least food wise.

PLEASE PROVIDE EVIDENCE

LINKS would be helpful

don't just blurt out answers like uncle joe here. I won't accept these answers.

Answer 1

Nope - certainly the ancient Romans had a version of ice cream in the time before Christ.

Answer 2

The problem with this question is what do you define as 'ice cream'. The ancient Romans and Chinese (and Sumerians) had frozen or shaved ice foods with fruit and sugar flavours. The inclusion of dairy products appears to have happened 'here and there' in cultures that used milk (which the Chinese largely didn't), but the invention of 'modern' ice cream can be traced back to Europe (a very cow-milk oriented culture) in the 1700's.

Your observation about the Chinese and food is fairly accurate. Some have observed that China had a 'famine' food culture - basically over time they have encountered so many 'bad times' that they have found ways of eating just about anything. It could also be observed that eating and food was central to Chinese social life (still is) and one-upmanship in foodstuffs was a way of displaying wealth and status. Hence folk would look for impossibly exotic and rare things to serve their guests. There's a bit of that in the west where folk will pay $1000 for an omelette in New York.

For references try these two.

Answer 3

I don't know one way or the other, but generally speaking the Chinese are not dairy type people... they are mostly lactose intolerant and never even came up with cheeses... so I would be surprised if they invented ice cream...

you can find the history of ice cream here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cream



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Answer 4

*nods head*