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I first met Dr. Amy Brady in real life at a literary reading in Brooklyn. We knew each other through the Chicago Review of Books, where she served as Editor-in-Chief and I wrote book reviews. Since then, she has moved to New Haven and now works as the Executive Director of Orion Magazine and a contributing editor for Scientific American.
In Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks – A Cool History of a Hot Commodity, she reveals the history of frozen water, and the impact it has had on American life and culture through food, sports, medicine, health, and industry. We met on Zoom to discuss the book, her research, and all the ways ice has changed our lives.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Ian MacAllen
Ice is really everywhere, and touches so many different aspects of our lives. How did you decide what to focus on in the book?
Amy Brady
It was not easy. Even making the decision to focus on the history of ice in the United States only limited the number of stories that I could tell by so much. What I ultimately decided to do was to start by focusing on the revelations—the pivotal moments in history—that I thought were the most interesting and then work backwards. I noticed that there were actually many interesting connections between people and systems and historical moments that tied all of them together.
For example, I talk about the rise of mechanically made ice. Not until I was writing this book did I realize that invention led directly to us being able to play hockey anytime of the year, anywhere.
Ian MacAllen
I found mechanically made ice really fascinating. I didn’t realize there was overlap between mechanically produced ice and naturally harvested ice. What did that mean for the way people consumed ice?
Amy Brady
It was transformative for the nation. Once we figured out how to manufacture ice on a large scale via many, many ice plants, it brought down the cost of ice considerably. More Americans than ever before could bring ice into their homes. That meant they could better preserve food. It meant they could experiment more with their cooking, with mixing their drinks, whether it’s alcoholic or not. It transformed hospitals and how patients were treated.
Ian MacAllen
With manufactured ice, it ended up cleaner because horses weren’t used to harvest it, but eventually water sources became contaminated. Did you come across other environmental impacts of manufacturing ice not related directly to clean water or dirty water?
Amy Brady
The same processes large plants were using to make ice, in some cases still are, are the same processes we use to make ice in our kitchen. Imagine, your kitchen ice maker but on a scale that is producing hundreds of tons of ice per day. It’s an enormous energy draw and an enormous carbon output. That said, even having those large plants doesn’t compare to the number of refrigerators. This country alone is selling at least 8 million refrigerators a year.
Ian MacAllen
One of the ways ice had a big impact was in the domestic sphere, particularly the refrigeration of perishables and the home kitchen. Did you look at how the American diet evolved as a result of refrigeration?
Amy Brady
The ice trade itself first resulted in the different types of food that became available. When Frederick Tudor started bringing ice to the Caribbean, even before he started bringing ice to the southern United States and territories, on his way back, he brought all kinds of citrus and other fruits that hadn’t been introduced to the United States yet.
Then once people got ice boxes, they were able to preserve food for longer periods of time, so suddenly people living away from the coast were able to eat fish. Fish had long been a part of the diet of indigenous people who had lived along the coast, and then the colonized settlers could eat fish—but there was no way to preserve it over long distances. Suddenly people in Oklahoma could eat fish.
Then it changed meat packing plants. The fact that people could pack beef into an ice car on a train and travel long distances meant that more people were able to eat meat. Chicago became the hub largely because of the railroad system and because of the invention of ice cars. There were literally cars filled with ice.
Ian MacAllen
Did you come across any specific recipes that were changed because of ice?
Amy Brady
Pretty much anything that was made with produce change. Once perishable items could be shipped across the country without rotting thanks to ice, people were able to have things like apples. Previously, if they didn’t live close to an apple grove, they weren’t going to have apples. That led to the phrase, “as American as apple pie.” When visitors from Europe would come to the United States, they would see that everybody was eating desserts made with fresh fruit and that just didn’t happen anywhere else because there wasn’t any other nation on earth that had an ice trade as large as the United States.
Ian MacAllen
The introduction of ice delivery service led to a unique period in American history where a workman would bring ice to your house to fill your icebox. You write: “by entering the private, domestic spheres of housewives–something few other deliverymen did–icemen were seen by some as crossing a forbidden threshold” Was there a social more change that allowed this to happen, or was it something people didn’t talk about?
Amy Brady
People talked a lot about it. The iceman had to cross the forbidden threshold because he had to get the ice in the icebox. That was part of their duty–the end of the cold chain. I was surprised at how many popular songs featured lyrics about women stealing a kiss from the iceman. I came across so many examples in late 19th century and early 20th century Valentine’s Day cards with puns on the iceman. There is the Eugene O’Neal play, The Iceman Cometh, which is the punchline to a joke about the iceman with the protagonist’s wife.
There’s this whole kind of popular culture surrounding the idea that the iceman was going to steal a wife. Or was some sort of sexual threat, or presence at the very least. I spent a lot of time thinking about how no other delivery men or strangers were allowed inside the home. The milkman left the milk outside, the mailman left the mail outside. It was only the ice man who came in. There was a lot of social joking, and social anxiety around that.
Ian MacAllen
Were you able to see how cocktails expanded from New Orleans into the rest of the south and then further north?
Amy Brady
I would argue today that New Orleans is still the cradle of civilized drinking. There’s so much innovation that is happening there. Those early celebrity bartenders moved around a lot. Unless it was Jerry Thomas who actually wrote down his recipes, so much of bartending in the history of mixology was ephemeral. It existed only in the heads of the people making the drinks, and then word of mouth. We have a sense that anybody going through New York or New Orleans or eventually San Francisco was going to pick up some tips, and wherever they landed they were bringing that knowledge with them. It’s kind of an oral history tradition.
Ian MacAllen
You mention the packing of ice with sawdust, and natural ice was harvested with horses who relieved themselves on it. How did they clean horse manure off of ice? How did they get the sawdust out of the ice when they were serving it as something to be eaten?
Amy Brady
We hope they did that, but we don’t know. One can assume ice is at least gently washed if it was going to touch the mouth of a consumer. As the ice trade grew, simultaneously, our rivers and lakes grew filthier because of the peak of the industrial revolution—ice was not sold at the same price. When ice freezes, it tends to push all impurities to one side. So when you slice it you have some really clear ice with few impurities and then you have the absolute dirtiest of ice, and those two different types were sold at different rates. One would hope that restaurants and bars were purchasing the clearest ice possible if it was going to be consumed by people. But there are also records of bars in particular purchasing the absolute dirtiest ice they could because it was cheap and then they would set bottles of lager in it. Whether they scooped that into glasses is lost to history—but of course it happened.
Ian MacAllen
Finally, were there any unexpected surprises?
Amy Brady
So many things. Ice was something that I never really noticed before unless I ran out of it. It is so prevalent, and it’s cheap to buy and easy to make. When I started researching this book I had no idea that such a common substance affected so many areas of American life. It transformed how we think of food and drink—but it also transformed how we played sports and how we practice medicine. It gave rise to an industry that now spews roughly 10% of all carbon emissions into the atmosphere. Ice is a profoundly impactful substance. And I started writing this book because I just thought it would be interesting to know and tell. I didn’t realize I was going to completely rethink and have an entirely new view of how a substance could have such a big impact.
NON-FICTION
Ice: From Mixed Drinks to Skating Rinks – A Cool History of a Hot Commodity
by Amy Brady
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
Published June 6th, 2023
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