Necessity truly is the mother of invention. Nothing like a sweltering summer in the tropics to bring on visions of cold puffy air. Preferably in the form of ice cream. Long before anyone had a word for ice cream, folks around the world were already trying to make something like it. an ancient icehouse inside a defensive wall, Iran photographed by Gen Sir Percy Molesworth Sykes KCIE, 1900 In China around 200 BCE, mixtures of milk and rice were frozen using ice collected from mountain lakes. By the Tang Dynasty, frozen milk desserts were being served to royalty from ice stored in underground houses built specifically for that purpose. In Persia around 400 BCE, people were eating faloodeh , a frozen dessert made with rose water, lime juice, and delicate noodles, a version of which still exists today. In India, kulfi developed as a slow-frozen milk dessert packed with pistachio, saffron, and cardamom. In the Middle East, people were drinking sharbat , fruit syrups...