Along with Scotch whisky, French food, British suits and American pre-Prohibition cocktails, ice spheres arrived in Japan in the late 19th century as part of the ongoing Westernization efforts during the Meiji Restoration era. That sphere ice has experienced a revival is largely thanks to Japanese cocktail culture, which kept the tradition alive through American Prohibition. “Newspapers in Chicago were complaining it was everywhere,” says Greg Boehm, founder of Cocktail Kingdom, citing an 1899 article in the Chicago Chronicle from his vast archives, which describes “pieces as big as a toy rubber ball.” What is known is that by the 1890s, sphere ice had grown to be such a phenomenon that it was already passé. I found neither, because like so many innovations, it was likely born of mutual revelation across the arc of history. But how is it that sphere ice has come to symbolize the zenith of ice culture, while simultaneously becoming as ubiquitous as a suburban freezer staple? To better understand its trajectory, I went looking for the patient zero of sphere ice: the first known account of its use, or perhaps a little-known inventor who lay claim to its creation. “Foreign travelers in the United States marveled at the wasteful way we flaunted our supply of clean ice.”įast-forward to today, where ice is the entire draw for some drinks-great big hand-carved wedges to sleek, slippery spheres. John Gorrie had produced commercial ice machines, widening the market even further. ![]() By the mid-19th century, dueling American inventors like Andrew Muhl and Dr. ![]() According to author Gavin Weightman’s The Frozen-Water Trade : A True Story, Tudor helped to establish a consumer market for ice, changing the way we eat and drink along the way. In the early 19th century, Boston merchant Frederic Tudor pioneered the international ice trade, shipping New England pond ice to warm weather ports in the Caribbean, Europe and even as far as India. From the Persian yakh-chals (“ice pits”) of antiquity to Thomas Jefferson’s ice house at Monticello, ice has always been “a rare treat for the wealthy” as Brian Petro writes in his pocket history of ice at Alcohol Professor.
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