#sharbat

I suspect somebody is confusing much later Persian sorbet (sharbat, sherbert in English) with ice cream. Sorbet doesn't have milk in it, although it is a frozen (fruit) treat with sugar. Some is liquid, some (thicker) was eaten with a spoon. Yet it's medieval.

Was there some earlier version? I just don't know. I do know that snow was sometimes fetched from mountain tops to cool wine. There's even a piece of pottery just FOR that (pskyter). One below: you can see how that bottom part would fit into the krater (mixing bowl), just below that, so it rests on top. The snow goes in the top, and it cools the wine. But that's wine.

This is the eternal problem for authors, too, btw. WHEN did something appear on the scene? The amount of time I spent running down random shit for Dancing with the Lion.... I had to take out a line about cloves because they didn't have cloves yet, for instance. And the reverse happens. I've had folks complain about the boys using "the finger" as an insult as "too modern," because it seems that way. It's not. Ancient pottery shows Greeks giving each other the finger. Ha.

Back to sorbet: it may appear in the Alexander Romance (I don't remember), but the Romance is centuries later. This is similar to "lemons" popping up in ancient Greece and Rome. They didn't have lemons. The citron was found in Persia...but that's not a lemon. It's the precursor to modern citrus. While some earlier work suggested Alexander brought back the citron (and I'm sure he probably ate one), we now think it was spread into the Mediterranean with migrating Jews, for sukkot. Same thing with apricots. Apricots were native to Anatolia. It's highly likely there were some dried apricot imports earlier, but apricot trees are later.

Some more of my babies!