describes harvesting ice and storing it in a cave. One thousand years later ancient Greeks and Romans collected snow from the mountains and kept it in pits covered with straw and branches. Wealthy Romans used snow to chill water and wine and for cold baths called
frigidaria. Alexander the Great had thirty pits filled with snow so that his troops could drink cold wine during the siege of the Indian capital of Petra.
Chilling preserves food by slowing both the growth of harmful microorganisms and the rate of metabolism and cellular respiration of the food. Long before this relationship was understood, there is evidence that Iron Age (beginning in Europe and the Middle East c. 1200 B.C.) communities stored food underground. The low temperature and humidity in caves maintained the freshness of seeds and grains while preventing losses from mold, fungus, and insects. Before mechanical refrigeration crops such as potatoes, apples, and cassava were often stored underground or in aboveground structures covered with straw and soil where they stayed fresh for as long as six months.
It has been known since antiquity that certain chemicals lower the temperature of water or snow. Chemical refrigeration was not common until the 1500s, however, when it became fashionable for the Italian nobility to chill wine in a solution of water and saltpeter (ammonium nitrate).
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