Legend has all sorts of fanciful stories about Marco Polo bringing ice cream from China and Catherine de’ Medici introducing it to France and King Charles I having his own personal ice cream maker; all wonderful stories, but sadly there is not a scrap of historic evidence to back up any of them.

Marco Polo didn’t introduce either ice cream or pasta to Europe and worse still, he probably never even went to China. Most of these myths seem to have been introduced by the Victorians. The earliest evidence of anything approaching ice cream being made was in China in the Tang period (A.D. 618-907). Buffalo, cows’ and goats’ milk was heated and allowed to ferment. This ‘yoghurt’ was then mixed with flour for thickening, camphor (yes camphor!) for flavour and ‘refrigerated’ before being served. King Tang of Shang had a staff of 2,271 people, which included 94 ice-men. Read more about it here.

15 Completely Useless Facts about Ice Cream