The empress of ice cream

Carlo

Find a room that is cool and clean, free from dirt and distractions of any kind.

The Book of Ices

Eventually Chiffinch found me a place in the palace kitchen. It was much as I imagined Hell might be: a vast, smoke-filled room where four great fires blazed day and night, and the stink of burning flesh hung in the air like a bitter fog. The cooks worked at long tables like seamstresses, banging with their cleavers at mounds of cow carcasses, or slicing morsels from animals so small they would have been discarded as inedible anywhere else. For the EngUsh, it quickly became apparent, were obsessed with meat, and thought it nothing strange to consume it almost daily. This beef or bear or boiled pork of theirs, however, was not actually ‘cooked’ in the sense that a Frenchman or an Italian would use that word; that is to say, made more palatable by the skills of an ingenious chef, with the clever addition of sauces, flavourings, herbs and so on, but was simply pushed onto a spit and roasted until it became tough and tasteless. Vegetables and herbs were apparently almost unknown, and although I was told the king himself sometimes ate raw fruit, in the French manner, this was considered a foreign affectation by his cooks, who would send along with the fruit bowl a board of ‘proper’ English puddings, such as taffety tart, stewed suet or plum duff. The courses were not even served separately: everything went out to the banqueting house in one chaotic rush of service, each cook carrying what she or he had made, soups and roasts and desserts all piled up in a heap for the king’s guests to pick at. Chiffinch was quite surprised

when I told him that in France now the dishes were served one at a time, like the acts of a play.

But the real problem, as far as I was concerned, was that there was nowhere suitable to work. Even if I removed myself to the furthest possible corner of the kitchen, it was going to be impossible to make an ice that was not melted from tht general heat almost as soon as it left the sabotiere. And, of course, there was the additional need to keep my process secret. By the end of the first day I had realised it would be better to take premises elsewhere.

I also considered whether to leave my lodgings at the Red Lion, where in general the food was almost as bad as that given to the king. However, there was one exception to this: each day they served a different kind of pie, and these simple dishes were, rather to my surprise, close to edible - that is to say, they usually contained a vegetable or two, and sometimes herbs such as lovage, marjoram or sage. On one occasion, in a pie of fish pieces simmered in milk, my homesick palate had even discerned a dehcious whisper of tarragon. So I decided to stay, at least for the time being, and enquired from the landlord whether I might rent from him a cellar or cold store for my work. Now that he knew I had such powerful patrons, he hastened to oblige me, and immediately fetched the keys to the cellars.

In fact the cellars turned out to be damp, moulc^y and windowless, while the kitchen was almost as hot as the one at Whitehall. Between the two, however, was a little’kore room or pantry, situated at a turn of the stair so that it was almost underground, and thus quite cool, but with a row of small high windows that admitted plenty of light. A stone ledge ran along one wall; a marble-topped table stood to the side, and at the rear was a windowless alcove where I could keep a stack of ice. I could discern no trace of damp, and the whole room was spotlessly clean.

‘This was the dairy, when we made our own cheese,’ the landlord, whose name was Titus Clarke, explained. ‘Now it is where Hannah works.’

The room’s present occupant was evidently a tidy worker: kitchen implements, rolling pins and so on, were neatly stowed along one wall, whUe bowls were stacked beneath the table. Trays of eggs were covered with a fly-cloth, and a sack of flour had been placed inside a raised drum for added protection from flooding or mice.

Tt will do very well,’ I said, gazing around. ‘How much do you want for the lease.>’

The landlord looked somewhat anxious. ‘To share it.> There is room for you both—’

I shook my head. ‘I must have complete privacy.’

‘Well, I am sure Hannah will understand,’ he said nervously. ‘After all, the king must have his ices. I will speak to her this afternoon.’

I had my chests taken downstairs, unpacked my things, and immediately began work on an ice of quinces. I had just reached the stage at which I was pouring crushed ice into the sabotiere when the curtain which served for a door was pulled back, and a woman of about thirty wearing an apron came in. By her side was the bootboy, Elias.

‘What are you doing?’ she demanded.

Hastily, I covered the mixture with a cloth. ‘That is none of your concern.’

‘Indeed it is,’ she retorted, ‘since Titus informs me that whatever it is, it means that I must leave my pantry.’

‘I am His Majesty’s confectioner,’ I told her, somewhat surprised by her tone. ‘The work I do here is confidential.’

‘And the work I do here can be done nowhere else. Making pastry requires cold, as I’m sure you are aware, and the main kitchen is much too hot.’

Behind her, the landlord was edging into the room, clearly anxious to avoid a confrontation. ‘Now, Hannah, the gentleman has leased the room from me, and there is an end to it.’

I3I

‘Very well,’ she said with a shrug. ‘In that case, there is an end to my pies. Elias, fetch me a bag.’ She began to take her rolling pins off their hooks. The landlord looked at me apologetically, as if to say that he regretted the interruption but everything was sorted now.

‘Wait,’ I said to the woman. ‘You are the pie maker?’

‘I was,’ she agreed. ‘Not any more, it seems.’

I now found myself in something of a quandary. For the fact of the matter, as I have said, was that the Lion’s pies were one of the principal reasons why I wished to remain there, and the thought of being deprived of them was decidedly unwelcome.

‘How long do you need the room for?’ I asked.

‘An hour or two each day, first thing.’

I made a decision. There was, surely, no danger in letting a servant use the room occasionally. ‘Very well. You may continue to make your pies here.’

To my surprise, she did not thank me, but simply folded her arms across her chest, as if waiting for the catch.

‘That is all,’ I added.

‘I won’t pay you rent,’ she said. ‘Titus already takes more than enough profit on the pies.’

‘Then you can repay me by doing some work, cleaning my pans and so on. And you,’ I beckoned to the boy, ‘how would you like to be my assistant? I will need someone to grate m.y blocks of ice every morning.’

His eyes grew round. ‘Will I wear a fine coat like yours?’

I laughed. ‘Indeed not, for you will not come to court. But I will pay you a penny every week.’

He nodded. ‘Ail right.’

‘Then that is settled. But you must both of you take a solemn oath that you will never reveal anything of what you see in here. The process is a secret one, and I intend that it shall remain so. Titus, would you fetch me a bible?’

Once again, I was surprised by their reactions to this simple

request. For they neither of them moved, and in the woman’s eyes there was - unless I was mistaken - a look of blazing defiance.

‘For the oath,’ I explained. ‘You must swear on the bible that you will tell no one how I make my ices.’

The landlord was wringing his hands. ‘If I might explain, sir, Hannah’s position on the matter—’

‘I am perfecdy capable of explaining myself,’ the woman interrupted. ‘We do not take oaths.’

I looked at her, baffled. ‘No oaths? Why not?’

‘First, because we do not use God as a kind of superstitious talisman or bogeyman with which to frighten credulous people. And second, because an oath implies allegiance to an authority higher than our own conscience.’

‘But if you do not swear, I cannot employ you,’ I pointed out.

‘Then you cannot employ me,’ she said simply. ‘I am sorry for it, but there you are. I will tell you now that I will not betray your confidence: but as for swearing, I will not.’

‘I see.’ I had never before been confronted by a situation such as this. Yet again it was borne in on me that France and Italy, for all that they were separated by the Alps, had far more in common than either had with this strange island just twenty miles off the coast of France.

She gestured at the walls. ‘Well? Do you want me to remove my implements or not?’

‘Leave them for the time being. I will have to think about this. In the meantime you can do some work for me, and we will see how you get on.’

‘I am to be on trial?’

‘Exactly.’

She shrugged. ‘Very well.’ She made it sound as if she was agreeing terms, rather than accepting a command from an employer. I wondered if all domestic servants in England were so lacking in deference. If so, it was a wonder anything got done.

*

The small amount of fresh ice I had brought with me from France was quickly exhausted. Even if the king had not suggested it, I would have needed to inspect his ice house.

St James’s Park was a pleasant enough place, although of course nothing in comparison to Marly or Versailles. In the middle, aligned with the windows of the king’s apaftments, was a long, thin lake, only a little wider than a canal. Trees and copses dotted the parklands, in the natural style, and here and there a few deer grazed. But everywhere I noticed projects abandoned or halfbuilt. A folly in the French style was still lacking a roof. A road, heading out to the west, started grandly between two stone gateposts but petered out after a hundred yards. And the wall encircling the park ran only halfway round, so that anyone who wanted to could enter without hindrance.

The ice house was at the northern side, near Piccadilly Hall, in a slight dip and under some trees - the worst possible location. However, the brick path that wound to the doorway was serviceable enough, and the door was of a sensible size - low, small, and facing north. It was, however, ajar.

I had taken the precaution of bringing with me a bundle of

tapers, to provide light, but I need not have bothered; a certain

amount of daylight found its way under the roof, and there was

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already a lit taper set into one wall. Even so, I stepped ankle-deep straight into slushy, icy water. Drawing back my foot with a curse, I realised that I was not alone.

‘We must have straw, John,’ a voice was saying on the other side of the ice. ‘Straw in bales, to pack around the edges. But straw will rot in this wet, so first the floor will have to be drained.’

‘We drained it three weeks ago,’ a rougher voice replied. ‘And straw, surely, will make it even warmer.’

Footsteps were splashing through the water tpwards me. I still could not see anyone, because my view across the circular chamber was blocked by the stack of ice.

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The first voice sighed. ‘Straw has the property of keeping a warm place warm, certainly. But it will also keep a cold place cold.’

‘So in effect, it becomes the warmth which is kept outside, not the cold inside.^’ a woman’s voice asked.

‘I had not thought of it that way, but yes - that is essentially correct, Elizabeth,’ the first man replied.

Raising my voice, I said, ‘Straw will not solve your problem here.’

‘Who’s there?’ the rougher of the two male voices called. A lantern was raised, illuminating three faces. ‘What are you doing here, sir? This is the king’s property.’

‘And I am here at his command.’ I stepped forward. ‘Carlo Demirco, at your service.’

‘The confectioner?’

‘The same.’

The group coming towards me consisted of three people, wrapped in thick coats against the cold. The man with the lantern was evidently the one called John: the other man, the one who had suggested straw, was being helped by a woman, who was supporting his arm at the elbow. In his other hand he held a stick, on which he leaned. It was this man who now eagerly addressed me.

‘Tell us, Demirco. Why is straw not sufficient?’

‘All the straw in the world will not make up for a poor design.’

‘Mind your manners,’ the rough man growled. ‘It was the Honourable Robert Boyle here who instructed the architects, after the drawings brought back from Italy by Sir John Evelyn.’

I shrugged. ‘The building is sound enough. It is the location that is flawed. And the central drain is either blocked or inadequate.’

‘A central drain!’ Boyle said. ‘Of course! How do they drain such places in Italy, then?’

‘In Elorence they place a cartwheel over a central pipe so that it removes any meltwater. Ice keeps better if it is dry.’

‘Is that so?’ Boyle asked keenly. ‘Now that I think of it, it may

be. Water is the natural element of ice, so it may facilitate the transition of the chilling corpuscles . . . We could determine it with a simple investigation. Come.’

He hurried outside, and crossed to' a building immediately

behind the ice house. We all followed, the woman because she was *>

still supporting his arm, the rest of us - it seemed t© me - simply because Boyle had a natural air of command.

‘Be careful, uncle,’ the woman said anxiously. ‘You have already been in the cold for twenty minutes, and Dr Sydenham said—’

‘If a man could get sick from cold,’ Boyle said cheerfully, ‘I should have been dead long ago. In here, Demirco.’

He opened a heavy door and we entered a room that was light and cold. It was, I realised, a workshop of some sort, the shelves lined with chemical apparatus; alembics, mortars, measures and so on. ‘What is this place.>’ I asked, curious.

Boyle was by now weighing some small blocks of ice, and noting down the amounts in a pocketbook. ‘My elaboratory. My second elaboratory, I should say. Here, with the king’s permission, I carry out my investigations into cold.’ He glanced at me. ‘Perhaps you think it strange, sir, that a chemist chooses to work with ice rather than with a furnace.’

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘I have spent my life working with ice. And yet I believe I understand its properties only dimly.’

He nodded. ‘Then let us take a small piece of ice, and place it in water, so, and then a similar piece, pladed so it wiU drain. Which will melt faster.>’

‘It is a waste of time,’ I said, shrugging. ‘I already know the answer.’

‘Perhaps, sir, but I do not, and until I have proved it to my own satisfaction I do not hold it to be true. Nullius in verba., yes?’

‘It is the motto of their society,’ the woman explained.

A dim memory from the schoolroom came into my head. “‘There is no truth in words, and so I will not swear to the authority of any master.” Horace, isn’t it?’

‘Very good,’ Boyle said, nodding.

‘But I think the results of this experiment may be the exact opposite of what Signor Demirco has described,’ the woman said thoughtfully. ‘Because ice in a drink makes the drink very cold, whereas ice irf air does not cool down the room to the same extent.’

‘Well, we shall see, we shall see,’ Boyle said happily. ‘But first. . .’ He was hunting through a stack of papers. ‘Here. Demirco, show us where we have gone wrong.’

He spread the architect’s plans in front of me. With them were some sketches torn from a traveller’s notebook.

‘The drain goes here,’ I said, pointing. ‘But even if you make a drain, you will still have the problem of those trees. Better to have your ice house sunk into the earth, and in an open clearing.’

‘Then we shall have to fell the trees, and bank the earth,’ Boyle said. ‘What do you say, John?’

The other man sighed. ‘If it is necessary, we will do it. Although we have not yet started on the bridge for the king’s new road to Chelsea, nor the birdcages on the walk.’

‘Roads can wait. Ice melts,’ Boyle said. ‘Speaking of which . . .’ He turned to the blocks of ice on the table.

‘The one in water does appear to be shrinking faster,’ his niece conceded.

Boyle consulted a pocket watch. ‘I wish now I had thought to add a third bowl, with some salt. It would be interesting to compare the rate at which that speeds up the process.’

‘You mean saltpetre,’ I said, then bit my tongue. I should not have been discussing the secrets of my art with any Englishman, let alone one so clearly capable of understanding them.

But Boyle was shaking his head. ‘Saltpetre? No, that is very oldfashioned. Saltpetre is of no more use than ordinary salt for this process.’

‘Ordinary salt?’ I repeated. ‘But that cannot—’ I stopped, confused.

Boyle shot me an amused look. ‘I can assure you, sir: if you have been using saltpetre, you have been wasting a great deal of money. It is, as it were, the salt and not the petre that has been doing the job you require. The corpuscles within the salt are attracted to those within the ice, and thus release them from their solid state.’

T thought not all the Fellows agreed with your corpuscular theory, uncle,’ the woman murmured.

He frowned. ‘They do not disagree. Some of the virtuosi require more proof That is a different matter altogether.’

‘■'■‘'VirtuosiV'’'' I enquired.

‘The invisible college,’ Boyle said. ‘The Gresham Gang.’

‘He means The Royal Society of London for the Improving of Natural Knowledge,’ Elizabeth explained. ‘A group of natural philosophers, who investigate and debate such matters.’

Boyle nodded. ‘Cold is one of our particular interests.’

‘Though it is fair to say,’ she added, ‘that so many other natural phenomena also come under that heading, that cold is scarcely unique on that account. Or even particular.’

‘I see,’ I said. Then something occurred to me. ‘Would your . . . philosophical investigations be able to tell you why certain liquids freeze thicker than others?’

‘Go on,’ said Boyle. ‘I sense an interesting mystery’

‘It is simply . . .’ I stopped, unsure how to put this. ‘I wish to make an ice cream that is truly smooth'. Not one that crunches between your teeth, with bits of frozen water in it. I managed it once, but I have been unable to discover since what it was that made it work.’

‘An ice that contains no bits of ice?’ Boyle said with a smile. ‘Well, compared with designing the new cathedral, or understanding circulation, it is perhaps not so very pressing a matter. But if I know my colleagues, it is exactly the sort of problem that would capture their fancy. We could devise some experiments, set you on the right path, and then, if we were successful, publish our findings—’

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“‘Publish?’” I said quickly. ‘What do you mean, “publish”?’

‘My dear fellow, there is no point in acquiring knowledge unless it is made public. That is how our society operates: every experiment is faithfully minuted, debated, verified and subsequently pubUshed, for the benefit of all.’

‘At which point,’ Elizabeth added, ‘the arguments usually start.’

‘There are occasionally some small matters of precedence or originality to be determined,’ Boyle conceded. ‘The point is, we jostle for experimental prominence, not commercial advantage.’

‘Perhaps it is not such a good idea after all,’ I muttered.

‘Commercial advantage being your raison d’etre^ He shrugged. ‘Very well, sir, that is a matter for you to decide. How fare our ice blocks, Elizabeth?’

‘The one in water is almost melted, while the dry one has merely become cylindrical,’ she reported.

‘Excellent! What I would give for an accurate thermoscope, so that we could measure their relative temperatures.’

I watched as Boyle made some notations in his book, more stung by his previous comment than I cared to admit. ‘It is not commercial advantage.’

‘What is not?’

‘Why I do this. It is not for money. Or not money alone.’

‘I am pleased to hear it,’ Boyle said mildly. ‘But I would remind you of our motto. Nullius in verba. And whilst your words do you credit, it is not those but your actions from which I will draw my conclusions.’

‘I cannot give away my secrets.’

‘In that case, sir, you had better not consort too long with gentlemen like myself,’ Boyle said. ‘Secrets being, in our considered view, the sworn enemy of truth.’ He turned back to his work bench, and I understood that, despite the man’s courteous tone, I was being dismissed.

*

Back at the Lion I immediately called for salt. Elias brought a salt pot: someone in the kitchen had assumed I meant a litde salt for seasoning.

‘Bring me five pounds of salt, as quickly as you can,’ I told him.

The child looked confused. ‘We do not have so much.’

‘Then send out for it. How much do you need.> A shilling?’ I tossed him a coin, and saw his eyes go very big. ‘Go,’ I said. ‘And if there is a penny change, you shall have it, so long as you are back within the half-hour.’

By the time he returned I was ready to conduct my own experiment. I had been impressed by the logical manner of Boyle’s test with the ice, putting the two cubes side by side so as to see which ‘ melted faster: I now proceeded to do the same, but with mixtures of ice and salts. In one subotiere I had my usual mixture of ice and saltpetre - a crystal extracted from the urine of horses and humans; and, as the apothecary had noted, an essential and expensive ingredient of gunpowder; in another, I put a similar quantity of ice to which I added ordinary table salt.

Now I needed something to freeze. It hardly mattered what, so I went into the kitchen and helped myself to a jug of the ubiquitous custard which they made by the gallon every day, for their desserts.

I waited twenty minutes, then opened the lids, j

Inside the first pot was a dense, smooth mass. I reached in and scooped out a shaving of frozen custard.' I reached into the second and did the same.

I sat back on my heels, thinking.

Boyle was right: the saltpetre was not needed after all. Ahmad had talcenit on blind faith, as he had taken so much else about this process. Now that I knew the truth, I would be able to freeze an ice mixture for next to nothing - for a few pennies.

Amazed, I permitted myself a brief oath in Italian.

‘What is it?’

I turned. Hannah was standing behind me, wiping her hands

on a cloth. Without asking my leave, she picked up one of the bowls of ice cream and looked at it curiously. ‘May I taste it.>’

Quickly, I took the bowl away from her. ‘It is not for vulgar palates.’

She shrugged. ‘Well, I don’t need to taste it, in any case. It wants more sugar.’

‘I make these for courtiers. Not those who would pour sweetness into any dish if they could.’

‘I only meant,’ she said, moving away, ‘that more sugar might set the custard better.’

‘Sugar? Set the custard?’

‘I see you are learning English by the method that hears it and then speaks it back again, signor.’

‘What are you doing here, anyway?’ I demanded. ‘This pantry is supposed to be private when I am working.’

‘I was looking for the custard I made earlier. But I see that it has been turned into ice cream.’

‘You can have it back. Here, put it near a stove and it will be just as it was before.’ I scraped the frozen mixture back into the jug. As I did so I tasted some, as was my habit.

It was good - surprisingly good: and despite the fact that I had not stirred it as it froze, creamy and soft. In fact, it was almost as soft as the one I had made in Versailles, the one that had got me banished.

Although it wanted a little sugar, to set it.

A knowing expression crossed Hannah’s face. ‘Well?’

I scowled. ‘These are secret matters. Recipes that no one else has except me. I do not discuss them with anyone.’

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