#yakhchal

[inspofromancientworld]

The Long History of Frozen Desserts

By Unknown author - Marie-Lan Nguyen, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22761889

While the refrigerator is relatively new, storing ice in warm seasons and climates has been around since at least 1780 BCE, when cuneiform records state that Zimri-Lim, the king of Mari, a city-state that was in modern-day Syria near the Euphrates, constructed an ice house 'which never before had any king built'. In China, references suggest that ice houses go back to at least 1100 BCE, with direct evidence to the 7th century BCE.

By Pastaitaken - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4944242

By 400 BCE, the Persians had developed yakhchāls, structures that used 'evaporative cooling [cooling brought about the evaporation of water], radiative cooling [the use of materials that reflect infrared radiation, allowing cooling even in direct sunlight], solar chimney [improved natural ventilation of buildings using solar energy to improve the draw of heat out of a building], and diurnal heat reservoir [a heat sink large enough to maintain a constant temperature through the day and night]'. The combination of these techniques allowed storage of ice and cold food and sometimes the freezing of ice. By directing water from a qanat, or underground aquifer into a yakhchāl, the water could freeze, or act as a heat sink since it takes a lot of energy to change the temperature of water. Such inventions allowed frozen and chilled desserts like sorbets and faloodeh, which is a traditional dessert made with thin, starch noodles blended with semi-frozen sweetened rose water, all year.

By Vicenç Salvador Torres Guerola - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=100184192

From the records, both written and archaeological, the yakhchāls didn't extend to other early cultures as the Chinese, Greek, and Romans gathered ice and snow to store in ice houses, which limited how much ice and snow could be stored and the storage was labor intensive, making cold drinks and foods expensive and desirable, though not without criticism. Hippocrates, Greek physician and philosopher who lived from about 460-370 BCE, opined that chilled drinks caused 'fluxes of the stomach', with others claiming that snow from lower slopes caused 'convulsions, colic and a host of other ailments'. Seneca, the Roman Stoic philosopher who lived from about 4 BCE - 65 CE, criticized the cost of iced desserts.

[artofgeist]

Flat color sketch portrait comm!

[what-marsha-eats]

"Yakhchal" is refrigerator in Iranian to this day.

[history-with-kayleigh]

How did the ancient inhabitants of the hot Iranian desert keep themselves cool during the intensely hot summers where even being in the shade is very unpleasant?

Think about being in the middle of a hot dry desert, it would be a blessing to be able to drink cold beverages and eat ice cream in the middle of summer to cool off, or to keep your meat, dairy, fruits and other foods fresh for longer periods of time by cooling them.

But I am hearing you asking yourselves.. ice?? how on earth would they be able to provide ice in the middle of a hot and dry desert?

The answer to that is simple yet innovative; build a Yakhchal, this is an ancient Persian invention that literally means “ice pit”. Yakh meaning Ice and chal meaning Pit.

[tacticaledcbob]

#funfacts #fact #information #interesting #ultrafacts #persia #yakhchal #refrigerator #ice #icebox #coldstorage #cooler #offthegrid #offgrid #prepper #preppers #preppertips #preppertip #prepperskills #preppersupplies #preppercommunity #bushcraft #bushcrafting #bushcraftcommunity #selfsufficient

[inspofromancientworld]

Ancient Agriculture: Cooling Food Storage

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/494027a

Cooling, or freezing, during the winter, was an ancient seasonal practice for hunter-gatherers and early sedentary farmers, as a way of storing meat and other food stuffs through the winter, when most food would be sparse. As settled agriculture spread, people began experimenting with ways to cool beverages and store food for longer during the warmer months, such as by evaporation, as the ancient Egyptians used when they placed water in shallow dishes on their roofs at night.

Source: https://19thcenturywellington.wordpress.com/2013/08/31/serendipity-and-ice-harvesting/

Harvesting ice and storing it through the warmer months required the development of insulation of various forms, though little is known of the earliest forms of these. In the Chinese collection of lyrics, the Shijing 詩經, which was collected between the 11th and 7th centuries BCE, 'describes religious ceremonies for filling and emptying ice cellars' but not the construction or purpose of the cellars, whether it was to store food or to cool drinks.

Source: https://www.facebook.com/dsonfoodstudies/posts/torino-ancient-roman-ice-box-more-like-an-ice-house-this-one-is-under-the-curren/3264407657218911/

Around the Mediterranean, the ancient Greeks and Romans dug pits that were insulated with various plant matter, such as grass, chaff, and branches. It is known from their writings that this ice was not used as food storage, but rather as cooling for drinks and possibly to create desserts. In the Tanak book of Proverbs, one verse reads 'As the cold of snow in the tie of harvest, so is a faithful messenger to them who sent him', which has led historians to interpret this as meaning 'that the Jews used ice to cool beverages rather than preserve food' at the time of its writing.

By Zereshk - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Yakhchal.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=349610

In Mesopotamia, ice houses were constructed around 1780 BCE by Zimri-Lim 𒍣𒅎𒊑𒇷𒅎 who was a Mari king, a kingdom along the Euphrates River, ordered the construction of ice houses, among the first constructed along the Euphrates, with the inscriptions claiming they were like 'which never before had any king built'. The ancient Persians developed buildings called yakhchāl یخچال, meaning 'ice pit', around 700 BCE with records going back as far as 400 BCE. These were semi-subterranean, with a pit below ground level with a thick dome built over, walls around to provide shade, taking advantage of both evaporative cooling, where the evaporation of water carries away heat, and radiative cooling, where the materials absorb and radiate infrared radiation (heat) easily, or by reflecting sunlight, which allows for cooling even in direct sunlight. Some are also built with a solar chimney, where a qanāt قَنَات (underground aqueduct) has a connection to the yakhchāl and a bâdgir بادگیر, or wind tower, with an opening facing away from the general wind direction. This causes moist air to be drawn up through the yakhchāl, cooling it passively. These structures were used to store ice and were also used to store food through the year. These worked well in the area due to the dry air allowing evaporative cooling to carry away heat easily, meaning that in the night, they could potentially reach freezing temperatures and create ice even in the summers.

[deadstonemasonssociety]

Once in the yakhchal, the water would freeze overnight. This process could be expedited through having ice, transported from the mountains, already present in the yakhchal to act as a seed.

Once the water was frozen, it would be cut up into blocks so that the water could be easily transported out of the yakhchal for drinking and other purposes. In addition to storing drinking water, the yakhchal was also used to keep food such as fruit, dairy products, and probably meat cool so that it would last longer.

Many Yakhchals in Iran, Afghanistan, and other parts of west and central Asia are still standing even after thousands of years. They represent the remnants of ancient Persia and are a part of the cultural heritage of Iran.

[unbfacts]