[DISCUSSION] Debate: ice cream in Redwall

[Bluefire]

Yeah it might work

[Skyblade]

Don't they already have ice cream at Redwall? If I remember correctly, in the first book Matthias was feeding Tim and Tess apple and mint ice cream before the feast.

[Calaron]

Wile ice cream would likely be impossible except I the far northern reaches, a form of gelato, a precursor of I e cream, would be very possible.  After all, they did manage to have frozen desserts in ancient Rome by taking snow and ice from the mountains or a cold enough winter and storing the resulting confection below ground.

[General Ironbeak]

Don't they already have ice cream at Redwall? If I remember correctly, in the first book Matthias was feeding Tim and Tess apple and mint ice cream before the feast.

I was waiting for that to come up.

Yet another occasion of early installment weirdness in book 1. It's always going to be the most interesting of the series, purely for that reason.

[LordTBT]

Yes, they could. Ice cream has been around for centuries, George Washington was fond of it.

Provided they had sugar and dairy, and snow from some mountains, they could certainly do it.

[General Ironbeak]

Well, there is dairy...but it's greensap dairy   

[321tumbler]

They might not have stored the ice cream and just served it right away.

[Ungatt Trunn]

First, let us look at the general facts before I give my honest opinion:
The only Redwall book to have any dairy food of any sort is the very first book (Redwall). And even BJ admitted that the first book had some stuff which would later be out of the bounds of the other Redwall books, so to speak. Dairy "wasn't" really a Redwall food; BJ didn't know what the setting for Redwall would be when he wrote the first book. So, I don't really think that Ice Cream would be possible in Redwall; they really couldn't have the animals to make them.
And for my honest opinion: somehow, I think Ice Cream in Redwall would make it feel a little bit like the real world. Something that really isn't that good.

[Redwaller]

There's a little issue here. If they did make ice cream, how did they get the ice? They didn't have an icehouse, and they most certainly did not go to the Northlands to get ice. Even in winter, who would want to eat ice cream?

[Ferrousferret]

Well, they have quote-unquote "Greensap milk," whatever the heck that is. Assuming they could also get salt and ice, I figure it's possible.

[Ungatt Trunn]

There's a little issue here. If they did make ice cream, how did they get the ice? They didn't have an icehouse, and they most certainly did not go to the Northlands to get ice. Even in winter, who would want to eat ice cream?

Another good point.

Well, they have quote-unquote "Greensap milk," whatever the heck that is. Assuming they could also get salt and ice, I figure it's possible.

Don't you need to get salt from the sea? If so, it would be pretty unlikely that the Redwallers had salt.

[Jukka the Sling]

Well, they have quote-unquote "Greensap milk," whatever the heck that is. Assuming they could also get salt and ice, I figure it's possible.

Don't you need to get salt from the sea? If so, it would be pretty unlikely that the Redwallers had salt.

There's other sources for salt. Or you could make snow cream instead, which is a sort of ice cream that doesn't need salt.

[321tumbler]

There's a little issue here. If they did make ice cream, how did they get the ice? They didn't have an icehouse, and they most certainly did not go to the Northlands to get ice. Even in winter, who would want to eat ice cream?

The books don't say there wasn''t an icehouse.

[rachel25]

They could keep the ice cream cool during summer, by keeping it in the Cellars.

[Ferrousferret]

Actually, I was watching Revolution (If anyone's ever seen that. You know, the show where all electricity magically stops, the world reverts to the dark ages & the US fragments into various repulics and empires?) and there was one part where one of the characters but ice in his scotch. I was watching the commentary on the DVD and, because of an overwhelming response of people saying he couldn't possibly have ice in the summer without electricity, they said they found out in research while writing the show that rich people could have ice cut from frozen lakes, packed in crates full of sawdust and shipped to them pre-electricity.

As for the salt, you can get it both from the sea, and from certain kinds of rock- particularly in mountains or deserts. One of the biggest salt mines is in Peru- and it's literally a massive salt desert up in the Andes Mountains. And when i say Salt Desert, I mean a giant basin where the ground is practically 100% pure rock salt.