Online Talk | Ivan Day on Ice Cream Coolers
From the Connecticut Ceramics Circle (with the full 2023–24 lecture schedule available here). . .
Ivan Day | Frozen Treats: The Development of the Ice Cream Cooler
Online, Connecticut Ceramics Circle, Monday, 12 February 2024, 2pm (Eastern)
Worcester Ice Cream Cooler (Ice Pail), ca. 1770, ‘Jabberwocky’ design, soft-paste porcelain (Houston: Rienzi Collection, 84.584.1.A-.C). Images of the bucket, liner, and cover pulled apart are available at Day’s Instagram account here.
Ice creams and water ices evolved in Italy in the second half of the seventeenth century. Initially they were a high-status luxury confined to court entertainments. Serving ices at table was not easy, as they had to be kept in a frozen state. Eventually, attractive three-part tin-glazed earthenware vessels called seaux à glace started to appear in France in the 1720s. Only a few of these faïence examples have survived, the earliest from Rouen dating from 1700–25. Another from Moustiers made in the Clérissey manufactory dates from circa 1725.
In order to keep the contents frozen, ice mixed with salt needed to be placed in the lower pail and the lid, with the ice cream contained in a bowl between. However, earthenware was not an ideal material for this purpose. It is likely that salt eventually found its way through any crazing in the glaze and was absorbed by the porous clay body, resulting in the glaze flaking off. Soft-paste and later hard-paste porcelain proved to be a much more durable material for making these beautiful vessels. The Sèvres manufactory based their porcelain seaux on the earlier faïence shapes, but developed a range of new forms closely allied to their own wine cooler designs. At first other European factories based their designs on the Sèvres model. In this illustrated Zoom lecture, Ivan Day will not only outline the development of these wonderful vessels, but demonstrate how they were used with an example from his collection.
Ivan Day is an independent historian of the social history and culture of food. He is celebrated for his reconstructions of historical table settings, which combine museum objects with accurate re-creations of period dishes. His work has been exhibited in many major museums in the UK, Europe, and North America, including the Getty Research Institute, Detroit Institute of Arts, Gardiner Museum, and Minneapolis Institute of Arts. In 2007, he worked on a re-creation of an imperial table featuring a Meissen Parnassus by Johann Joachim Kändler for the BGC exhibition Fragile Diplomacy: Meissen Porcelain for European Courts, ca. 1710–63, curated by Maureen Cassidy-Geiger.
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As Day notes through his Instagram account,
“The lecture is a much revised version of one that I once delivered at a symposium at the Gardiner Museum in honour of the truly great porcelain scholar Meredith Chilton. Meredith is a close friend and colleague, but also a highly valued mentor. I have learnt so much from her. So my presentation is in honour of this wonderful woman.”
New Book | The Art of Cooking
Montiño’s cookbook appeared in new editions throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. Carolyn Nadeau’s English translation was just published in November. Her Instagram account is immense fun (and I’m grateful to Ivan Day for noting it on his account). –CH
From the University of Toronto Press:
Carolyn Nadeau, edited and translated, Francisco Martínez Montiño, The Art of Cooking, Pie Making, Pastry Making, and Preserving: Arte de cocina, pastelería, vizcochería y conservería (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2023), 760 pages, $150. Bilingual edition.
In 1611 Francisco Martínez Montiño, chef to Philip II, Philip III, and Philip IV of Spain, published what would become the most recognized Spanish cookbook for centuries: Arte de cocina, pastelería, vizcochería y conservería. This first English translation of The Art of Cooking, Pie Making, Pastry Making, and Preserving will delight and surprise readers with the rich array of ingredients and techniques found in the early modern kitchen. Based on her substantial research and hands-on experimentation, Carolyn Nadeau reveals how early cookbooks were organized and read and presents an in-depth analysis of the ingredients featured in the book. She also introduces Martínez Montiño and his contributions to culinary history, and provides an assessment of taste at court and an explanation of regional, ethnic, and international foodstuffs and recipes. The 506 recipes and treatises reproduced in The Art of Cooking, Pie Making, Pastry Making, and Preserving outline everything from rules for kitchen cleanliness to abstinence foods to seasonal banquet menus, providing insight into why this cookbook, penned by the chef of kings, stayed in production for centuries.
Francisco Martínez Montiño was a Spanish cook and writer of the Golden Age.
Carolyn A. Nadeau is a Byron S. Tucci Professor of Spanish at Illinois Wesleyan University.
c o n t e n t s
List of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 The Cookbook as Cultural Artefact
2 Martínez Montiño’s Biography and the Early Modern Spanish Kitchen
3 Cookbook Organization
4 Ingredients
5 Taste at Court and the Emergence of Spanish Cuisine
6 Curiosities of Martínez Montiño’s Cookbook
7 Martínez Montiño’s Legacy
8 Previous Editions
9 This Edition and Commentary
Arte de cocina, pastelería, vizcochería y conservería
Tasa / Certificate of Price
El Rey (Privilegio) / The King (Privilege)
Prologo al lector / Prologue for the Reader
Advertencia / Notice
Tabla de los banquetes / Table on the Banquets
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Appendix 1: Kitchen Furnishings and Equipment
Appendix 2: On Measurements
Appendix 3: Images from Recipes Recreated
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
Performance | Handel: Made in America
Image (clockwise from top-left): Latonia Moore, Terrance McKnight (photo by Julie Yarbrough Photography), J’Nai Bridges (photo by Dario Acosta), Davóne Tines (photo by Noah Morrison), Malcolm J. Merriweather, and Noah Stewart.
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Two performances, next week at The Met:
Handel: Made in America
Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 15 and 16 February 2024
Friday, February 16 at 6pm, join us for a pre-concert discussion with Juilliard ethnomusicology professor Fredara Hadley and Handel scholar (and Handel: Made in America co-creator) Ellen Harris, moderated by journalist Eric V. Copage (The New York Times)—free with ticketed admission to the performance
George Frideric Handel was the it-boy of 18th-century England. His music spread across boundaries of genre and social class, making his operas, oratorios, and instrumental works wildly popular with the British masses. But Handel rose to fame atop the burgeoning British Empire, history’s most influential global superpower, and in Georgian England, the same trading companies that underwrote arts and culture turned their profits from sinister activities: the trade of exotic goods and, most notably, enslaved people.
Through the lens of Handel’s life and works, musician and storyteller Terrance McKnight (WQXR) leads an intimate and revealing journey about art, power, history, and family, weaving his own history as a young African American man inspired by classical music with the story of Handel’s world and the money, power, and people that moved and were moved by it. Director Pat Eakin Young (La Celestina at The Met), conductor Malcolm J. Merriweather (The Ballad of the Brown King at The Met), and famed Handel scholar Ellen Harris complement a cast of star opera singers: soprano Latonia Moore, mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges, tenor Noah Stewart, and bass-baritone Davóne Tines. Commissioned by MetLiveArts. Tickets start at $35.
• Terrance McKnight, co-creator and performer
• Pat Eakin Young, co-creator and director
• Ellen Harris, co-creator and dramaturg
• Malcolm J. Merriweather, conductor
• Latonia Moore, soprano
• J’Nai Bridges, mezzo-soprano
• Noah Stewart, tenor
• Davóne Tines, bass-baritone
• Voices of Harlem, choir
Enfilade 
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