The empress of ice cream

Carlo

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To make' a sorbet of apricots: stone and scald twelve apricots in season, and pass them through a sieve: take six ounces of soft moscado sugar, and beat the mixture with a little cream of lemonade. Simmer altogether, then put it in the freezing pot and work it very fine.

The Book of Ices

It was my great good fortune that there was among the Medici princesses at this time a lady called Cosima de’ Medici, who never married. Instead she dedicated her life, and the considerable portion of Medici wealth entailed on her, to good works, of which just one was to establish a kind of schoolhouse for urchins, orphans and the children of her servants, under the tutelage of two or three great men of learning. I was fortunate enough to join this group, my master being too fearful of his own position to pretend that he was anything other than delighted with the plan. I cannot now imagine what those eminent thinkers and scholars thought about having to teach the rudiments of bdok learning to a collection of m^azzi like us, but such is the power'of wealth that three times a week we all trooped into the great biblioteca above the Canons’ Cloister and parsed our first letters from the priceless manuscripts it contained. Princessa Cosima was criticised for this scheme, I believe, most particularly by churchmen, for it was said that nothing but ill would come of spreading learning outside the Church, or of confusing poor ignorant children such as ourselves about our place in the natural order of things. But my education was not only of benefit to me in the matter of bobk learning. I did not purposefully study those around me and try to copy their

manners, but just as a child will learn to speak the language of his parents simply by hearing it, so growing up in that court I acquired without realising it something of the manners and easy demeanour of a gendeman. I believe, too, that it was being tutored in Latin from such an early age that was responsible for my fluency with languages - a skill that has been almost as useful to me as my abilities with ice.

As the years passed, I gradually came to despise my master. For all that he took great care to ensure that I remained in mortal fear of him, he was a man in fear himself; and what he was principally afraid of was that someone would steal his secrets. He often told the story of the famous cook, chef d^equipe to a great nobleman, who was so proud of his creations that he decided to write his recipes down and publish them in a book. The book was a great success, widely copied and republished (with, of course, no further payment to the author); meanwhile, other cooks seized on the recipes and improved them, or simply served the dishes as if they were their own. The result was that the chef was dismissed, his position taken by a younger rival, and he died famous but destitute. It was, Ahmad said, an illustration of the folly of seeking acclaim instead of riches in this world.

I sometimes wondered why Ahmad was prepared to share his own knowledge so readily with me; but I soon decided that, so far as he was concerned, I was simply a workhorse, a creature incapable of reason. He taught me what he knew, not because he wanted to share his secrets, but because he wanted to share the labour. And so I learnt the difference between the four kinds of ice that could be made: cordidle or liquors, into which crushed snow was stirred to chill granite^ shavings of frozen water over which were poured syrups made from rosewater or oranges; sorbetti^ more complex water ices, in which it was the syrups themselves that were frozen, the mixture paddled as it hardened so that the fragments lay in the pot like a glittering mound of sapphires; and finally sherbets, the most difficult of all, made with

milk that had been infused with mastic or cardamom, so that they resembled snow that had refrozen overnight. I learned how to construct chilled obelisks of jelly; how to use silversmiths’ moulds to cast fantastic frozen plates ^nd bowls, and how to carve the ice into extravagant table decorations. I mastered the spectacular entertainments of the great engineer Buontalenti, who had constructed fountains, tables, and even whole grottos out of ice. But I knew that if I so much as breathed a word of these techniques to anyone else, Ahmad would have me blinded and my tongue put out with one of the red-hot irons we used to carve ice sculptures. He hinted, too, that there were still secrets that I was not yet privy to: special ingredients and gums described in the notebooks which he was keeping to himself, to ensure that I would always know less than he did.

And yet the learning, I noticed, was all one way. As I have said, I often observed the cooks around us as they worked, and it sometimes seemed to me that the confections they came up with would make good syrups with which to flavour our ices. A summer dolci of lemon froth and dessert wine, for example, or slices of musk melon whose natural sweetness was offset with a sprinkling of ground ginger - these, surely, were tastes which would provide us with welcome variety. But if I suggested we try such a thing, even as an experiment, Ahmad would look at me as if I were mad.

‘It is not one of the four flavours. If you don’t believe me, look in the book.’

He was taunting me, of course: he knew I could not read the Arabic in his notebooks. Nor did I need to read them to know the handful of flavours - rosewater, orange, mastic and cardamom which were all that the ancient vellum pages permitted.

It seemed to me, too, that if our ices had a drawback, it was that shooting pain which had gripped my throat as I crunched the orange-scented crystals between my teeth. It appeared to come from the action of biting down on the ice, and was thus presumably impossible to eradicate. We tried to make the crystals

as small as possible, grating the ice from the blocks with a kind of chainmail gauntlet until they were as tiny as chips of salt or sugar: but once you went below a certain size the ice would melt away to water, and all that you had in your goblet or glass after that was a kind ofjorange- or rosewater-flavoured slush. I longed to make an ice that was as smooth and thick and soft as that chocolate the cook had offered me to taste; an ice that contained the cold of ice, without its harshness.

One day Ahmad was away from the kitchens with a toothache. He left me with strict instructions as to how I was to occupy my time, but evidently the tooth-pulling was more painful than he had anticipated, since he failed to return when he had said he would. At last I saw my chance.

Apricots were in season just then. The cooks served them to the Medici peeled and quartered, with the juice of melons and some cream. Taking a bowl that had already been prepared for the Grand Duke’s table, I mashed it up, tipped the mixture into the sabotiere^ the freezing pot, and waited eagerly for it to congeal, stirring it in the usual way.

It was not a success. The mixture froze, certainly, but the different parts had frozen in different ways - that is to say, there were rock-hard pieces of apricot, and crystals of frozen melon juice, but the cream had turned powdery, like curdled egg, and far from combining, the various elements appeared to have become more separate. When I tried to eat a spoonful of this granular mixture, the different parts did not even melt in the same way on my tongue, so that it was like chewing frozen gravel. But even so, there was something about the freshness of the fruit, and the sweetness of the melon juice, that was a refreshing change from the heavily perfumed flavours Ahmad insisted on.

A better solution, I realised, would be to make a simple apricot cordial or syrup and then freeze it - a sorbetto^ in fact. The smoothness would have to wait for another time: it was the flavour of the fruit that was important here. I went to get another

dish of apricots, and witnessed a violent altercation between the cook who had prepared the previous one and a servant he was accusing of having stolen it. It was not the time to try to filch another. Besides, Ahmad might return at any moment, and I had to clean all the utensils before he realised what I had been up to.

And so I began a period in which I lived a double life. With Ahmad, during the day, I was a servant, following his instructions dutifully and without complaint. But by night I was a kind of alchemist, the kitchen my laboratory as I experimented with different combinations of flavour and ingredient. Nothing was too outlandish or ridiculous for me to try. I froze soft cheeses, digestifs^ vegetable juices and even soups. I made ices from wine, from pesto Genovese, from almond milk, from crushed fennel, and from every different kind of cream. I experimented wildly, blindly, without method or purpose, hoping to chance on something - some method, some key - which I was sure existed somewhere: something that could unlock the deepest, frozen secrets of ice. It was as if the ice itself was calling to me, enticing me on: and, although I cannot claim that I ever truly got to the bottom of what would or would not work, just as a painter by practising at his palette will gain an understanding of what colours he must mix to achieve a given effect, so I gradually became more fluent in the language of tastes. Ahmad, I am sure, noted my increasing confidence, but doubtless put it down to the fact that I was becoming older in years.

There were other changes too. I was aware that I was becoming a man, from the fire igniting in my veins; and a reasonably good-looking man at that, from the admiring glances I received from the girls who worked in the kitchens, not to mention the ribald comments passed by their older, married colleagues. Then there was Emilia Grandinetti . . . Like me, she was fifteen. Apprenticed to one of the seamstresses who made dresses for the court, she was the sweetest thing I had ever seen. Her skin was the

colour of butter when it was heated in a pan: her teeth, and the whites of her eyes, were as clear and bright as snow in that dark, laughing face. Soon the glances between the two of us became smiles; flirtations became conversations; laughter turned to love. 1 cim the luckiest prince in nil Florence^ I thought proudly. We spent stolen hours sitting on the roof of the palace where no one could see us, dizzy with love, holding hands and talking about our dreams.

‘I’m going to be the greatest confectioner in the world,’ I told her.

‘Really? And how will you do that?’ she teased.

‘I’m going to make ices in a thousand flavours. The smoothest, richest ices that have ever been made.’

But when I told her I would make an ice especially for her and smuggle it out of the kitchen, she shook her head.

‘I don’t want to get you into trouble.’

I asked her about her hopes for the future too, but these were all about me: she wanted us to be together, to have a family; perhaps, if we were very fortunate, to see our children one day become servants of the Medici in their turn.

Marriage was forbidden to apprentices, but those who had their master’s permission might become betrothed, and an apprentices’ betrothal was considered almost the same as a marriage, if not quite in the eyes of God, then certainly in the eyes of those immediately below Him. So I waited for the most auspicious moment, and broached the matter with Ahmad.

We were working on a magnificent ice sculpture of a soaring eagle, the centrepiece of a table of iced jellies. I did most of the carving now, my hands wrapped in rags against the cold. Not only was my touch surer than my master’s, and my eye truer, but I could bear the work for longer - almost as if the cold that had claimed my finger had at the same time numbed the rest of me against its effects. Or perhaps, I thought, as I polished the ice until

the sculpture seemed to glow from within, my master was simply getting old and lazy. I knew that on this occasion at least Ahmad was pleased with my work: when I had finished the Persian gave a nod and a grudging, ‘Not bad.’

‘Master, I have been thinking . . .’ I began.

‘Yes.> What is it?’

‘There is a girl I have become attached to. I was wondering if I could have your permission to become betrothed to her.’

Ahmad busied himself wiping down the table on which we had been working. ‘What makes you think my permission will make any difference?’

‘Those are the apprentices’ rules, sir,’ I reminded him. ‘I may not marry without my master’s consent.’

Ahmad shot me an amused glance. ‘You see yourself as my apprentice, do you?’

‘Of course,’ I answered, surprised. ‘What else?’ For one delirious moment I wondered if he was about to say that he considered me no apprentice but his equal; perhaps even, one day, his partner.

‘An apprenticeship is purchased,’ he said briefly. ‘Your parents were poor.’

‘I don’t understand. So poor that they could not afford to buy me an apprenticeship?’

‘Poorer even than that. So poor that they were happy to sell you. You are no apprentice, boy, and never will be. You are my possession, and you will not be at liberty in your lifetime to become betrothed to any girl, let alone to marry.’ He threw the handful of soaked rags to one side. ‘Now take these outside and rinse them.’

It was the sliver of ice in my heart that saved me. But for that, I might have killed the Persian there and then, and to hell with the consequences.

Not to marry. That was bad enough, but if I was not at liberty to marry it also meant that I was not at liberty to become a crafiis

man in my own right. I would be Ahmad’s chattel until the day I died. I would never get the opportunity to create anything of my own: I would go to my grave still churning out the four flavours of his damned notebooks. My life would have been wasted, my flesh and blood melting into the grave as surely as a block of ice left on a table melts away to water. At the thought of it a mute, terrible fury throbbed in my veins. But like a bulb in frozen ground I waited, my anger contained, until an opportunity presented itself.

The opportunity was a Frenchman called Lucian Audiger. I never discovered how he found me: presumably he bribed someone for information about the Persian ice makers and was told about an Italian youth who might be a weak link. Amassing information, truly, was Audiger’s great skill, although he himself believed that he was driven only by a burning desire to become a great confectioner. That was why he had travelled - first to Spain, where he learnt the art of making seed waters such as pine-kernel, coriander, pistachio and anis; then to Flolland, where he studied distillation, both of flowers and fruits; and from there to Germany, where he mastered the skill of making syrups. It was inevitable that he would eventually come to Italy, where both the Hapsburgs in Naples and the Medici in Florence were famous for mixing snow and ice into their wines and desserts.

He came to me in the middle of the night and shook me awake. The person who had brought him through the warren of service rooms slipped away, unseen, and by the time I was fully awake Audiger was already talking of Paris, of the glorious court that the young Louis XIV was constructing, the new palaces at Marly and Versailles; wealth to dwarf even the Medici’s, and a city filled with fashionable men and women eager for new delights. Coffee and chocolate houses were opening all over Paris: those who could make iced drinks and chilled confections would never starve, and as a partnership - two young men who between us could create every kind of confection or novelty - we would surely

enter the -service of the king himself. . . By this time I was barely listening. I had heard all I needed to hear. If you were going to run away from the court of the Medici with a Persian’s trade secrets in your head, you needed just two things: a patron at least the equal of the Medici, so that they could not simply demand your return, and for it to be somewhere a long, long way from the reach of a Persian’s dagger.

‘I have two conditions,’ I said, when Audiger finally paused for breath.

‘Name them.’

‘Never to call anyone master. And twenty-four hours to convince Emilia to come too.’

‘Done,’ Audiger said, holding out his hand. ‘I’ll meet you by the Porta San Miniato at midnight tomorrow.’

As early as was respectable, the next morning I found Emilia outside the seamstresses’ room. Drawing her aside, I told her of my plan.

‘But . . .’ she said. Her voice faltered. ‘If you run away, you’ll be caught. And then you’ll be put in prison. Hanged, even.’

‘It’s the only way, now. Don’t you see? There’s nothing for us here. If we leave, at least we have a chance.’

She glanced around. ‘I can’t talk now. My mistress . . .’

‘Emilia!’ I hissed. ‘I have to know. Are you comifig or not?’

‘I - I—’ she said, glancing nervously ,at the door, and in that moment I saw that she was too afraid.

I said desperately, ‘Look, I understand, caro. You loved me because you thought it was allowed. Now that you know it might get you into trouble, you’re frightened. But this is the only opportunity either of us is going to get. I have to take it. The question is, will you come?’

‘I will always love you,’ she whispered.

I felt a great heaviness descending on me. ‘That means no.’

‘Please, Carlo. It’s too risky—’

That night I was waiting by the Porta San Miniato long before the church bells struck midnight. By my side was a chest containing a sizeable haul of Ahmad’s ice-making equipment.

We stopped the dili^ence^ the high-speed mail coach drawn by six horses that went from Rome to Paris in long, non-stop stages. It did not usually take passengers; once again, Audiger seemed to have both the confidence and the money to bribe his way on board.

As we travelled north I looked out of the window. I had never before been further than Pisa, and I was thinking with an ache in my heart how each mile we covered was taking me further from Emilia.

T have been thinking,’ Audiger said.

I dragged my attention back inside the carriage. ‘Yes?’

‘Before we get to Paris we must get you some proper clothes.’ The Frenchman indicated his own fashionable garb. ‘It is important we do not look like tradesmen. At the French court, appearances are everything.’

I shrugged. ‘Very well.’

‘And we must think how best to approach the king. I know one of his valets: we can bribe our way into the royal presence, but it will be a waste of time unless we can present the king with a gift something special, something which will make him talk about us to all the men and women of his court.’

‘Very well.’ I yawned. Now that the tension of our escape was behind us, I felt exhausted. ‘We will make him an ice.’

Audiger shook his head. ‘More special even than that.’

‘I’ll think on it.’ It amazed me, this ability Audiger had to worry, not just about the next twenty-four hours, but about events that would not happen for days or weeks yet.

‘There’s something else.’ Audiger hesitated. ‘You said you would not have any man as your master. That is fair enough. But I think, nevertheless, that you should address me as your master when we are with others.’

I was ililly awake now. ‘Why?’

‘It is simply that I am older than you. People will expect me to be in charge. And besides, I already have a certain reputation in Paris. It will seem strange if I turn up with an Italian ragamuffin in tow and treat him as an equal. Not that you are a ragamuffin, of'course,’ he said quickly. ‘But that is how people may see it.’

Once again it was only the sliver of ice in my heart that made me restrain my anger. ‘I said I would have no master.’

‘And you will not have one. We will split our profits between us, that is completely understood. I will not be your master; it is simply that you will cM me master. You see the distinction, do you not?’

A little reluctantly, I nodded. ‘Very well.’

‘Good.’ Audiger looked out of the window. ‘But what to give the king,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘Now that is a worry.’

It was only as I drifted off to sleep that I realised that Audiger had misunderstood what I had said, back in Florence. He had thought I said I would have no master; but what I had actually said was that I would call no man master; I was quite sure of it. And yet here I was, agreeing to do just that. But perhaps Audiger had forgotten the exact words of our agreement.

‘Could one make an ice from peas?’ '

I jolted awake. The diligence had stopped, but only so the drivers could relieve themselves. Audiger stood by the side of the road, just beyond the open door, pissing into the field beyond.

‘What?’

‘I said, could one make an ice from peas?’ Audiger called over his shoulder. ‘Look, I am watering some right now.’

I looked out of tlie carriage. In the brilliant, flat light of a full moon I saw a field of peas, their plump green pods swinging in the breeze. The aroma of fresh legumes was, mercifully, more powerful than that of my companion’s piss.

‘The king has a strange passion for vegetables of all kinds,’ Audiger said. ‘Especially for peas. Each year his courtiers compete to bring him the first crop from their estates - it is the sort of contest he enjoys. And these are weeks earlier than any peas in France^ I am wondering if we could make an ice from them.’

‘But if you want to give the king peas, why not simply pick him some.>’

‘They will be withered long before we reach Paris. Even the diligence takes a fortnight.’

‘But you could freeze them.’

Audiger’s head appeared at the carriage door. ‘What?’

‘Freeze them,’ I repeated. ‘Preserve them in ice.’

Audiger stared at me. ‘Such a thing is possible?’

‘It is not just possible: it is simple. The Persians have long known that ice preserves fruit from corruption. Peas are surely no different.’

‘Yes? Brilliant! What would you need? Ice?’ Audiger gazed around the moonlit field. ‘But of course, we have no ice,’ he said dejectedly. ‘A couple of ice makers, with no ice.’

‘Audiger - where are we headed?’

The Frenchman looked nonplussed. ‘Paris?’

‘Via the Alps,’ I reminded him. ‘And although I have never been there, even I know that the Alps are—’

‘Full of ice! Stuffed with ice! Ice and snow everywhere you look! Yes!’ Audiger tossed his hat into the air, then caught it again. ‘But first we have to get our peas to the Alps,’ he said, more glumly.

‘How long before the coach gets there?’

‘Two days, perhaps three.’

‘My chest of equipment will still be cold; the pewter buckets and so on came straight from the Boboli ice house. If we put the peas in there . . .’

‘Yes! Yes!’ Audiger threw his hat up once more. ‘Of course!

With my vision, Demirco, and your expertise, we shall be the king’s confectioners in no time!’

Two days later, in an inn high on the mountain pass that led to France, Audiger watched me prepare the peas.

‘Packed sn6w is even colder than ice, and lasts longer,’ I explained. ‘Why, I do not know. But I intend to find out, one day.’

Audiger was staring at the snbotiere like a man awaiting a conjuring trick. Very well, I thought: I will show you some magic.

‘Now I add saltpetre to the snow. That makes it much, much colder. Again, I do not know why exactly.’

‘Go on,’ Audiger breathed.

‘Then I put the peas into the inner pot, like so.’ I poured the peas in and placed the lid on top.

‘Now what?’

‘Now we leave them. It is no different from leaving a cake in the oven - if you open the door too often to check it, the heat will escape and the cake will never get baked. Only in our case, it is the cold which must be kept safe.’

Audiger pulled out a pocket watch. ‘How long?’

‘The length of time between matins and mass, according to the bells of Santa Maria.’ >

‘What?’ '

‘Say half an hour.’

Audiger spent the next thirty minutes pacing up and down. When we finally opened the sabotiere he looked inside and drew in his breath.

The peas had drawn together into a ball, a silvery-green cluster flecked with ice. Audiger reached in and pulled it out. ‘Remarkable!’ he breathed.

‘Careful,’ I warned. ‘Your hands will warm them, and they will not taste so fresh if they have to be frozen a second time.’

‘They’re stuck!’ Peas were dotted on Audiger’s fingers, clinging

to his skin like burrs on cloth mittens. He tried to flick them off, but they would not budge.

‘Here, let me.’ I pulled the frozen peas off one by one. They did not stick to my fingers as they did to Audiger’s, I noticed. ‘We should put them away now. And we must take a chest of pressed snow with us in the coach, so that we can keep them like this.’