How were ice creams made before the invention of the refrigerator?

People used a machine that had a metal container with the ice cream mixture in it, and that was inside another barrel filled with ice and rock salt. The addition of the salt lowers the melting point of the ice, which makes it colder than 0 deg. C. Somebody cranks a hand crank which turns the container with the ice cream mixture around in the ice. The laws of thermodynamics state that heat is transferred more quickly with motion between the two sources (that's why fans work - moving air cools better than stagnant). So the extra cold ice combined with the motion of the cream mixture allows it to freeze.

You can still buy these machines, by the way.

Is this an attempt to be funny putting this question in the "Religion & Spirituality" section? Faith and prayer had nothing to do with the production of ice cream. Ice was cut in the winter from lakes and stored in ice houses during the winter. A hand-crank ice cream maker used ice and salt around the container of cream and flavorings. Have you heard of the ice box that proceeded the refrigerator?

Ice was harvested from the surface of freshwater lakes and stored in huge double walled ice houses insulated with sawdust and/or straw. Salt was either mined or collected from seawater evaporation ponds. When enough salt is added to ice, its temperature drops below the freezing point of the ice cream mixture.

FYI, the American taste for cold beer was also developed before refrigeration and the electricity to power it were available. People with enormous ice houses got rich, rich, rich back when a man would work hard all day for a single dollar and an ice-cold beer was a few pennies.

Ice was cut from lakes in the winter and stored below ground during summer. The ice was then delivered to homes and packed in straw to insulate it and keep your ICEbox cold. People would mix the ice with salt to lower the freezing point and use an ice cream churn to make it. Unfortunately you had no real way of storing it so you would make what you were going to use for that day.

Ice cream is still made the same way and you can still buy the hand cranked machines but most people go with the electric ones to be lazy.

When I was a kid and we made it by hand, we used no refrigerator, only ice. The old brass ice-cream maker thing was one bucket inside another, the outer one held ice, the inner one held the cream mixture and had a paddle and crank to keep it stirred.

Of course, the ice comes from refrigerators now, but my grandparents still had an ice-house (now just a shed) next to their farm house. The sunken floor was filled with straw for insulation, then ice was cut from the lake in the winter and stacked in there up to the roof. It would last most of the summer, and they used it to fill their ice-box in the house.

They also still had an outhouse in the back, and a hand-cranked pump-well in the kitchen sink.

with ice cream makers, hand cranked. they added sugar and cream and flavors (mostly fresh fruit) into a bucket that was fit into a larger bucket, ice was poured around the inner bucket and salt was sprinkled on it to make the ice melt slowly, as the milk/cream mixture was turned or churned it began to set up to a soft state and finally into ice cream. some also had ice houses* in the old days where they could store if for awhile but mostly they had to eat it immediately. it was a rare treat.

* ice houses - the ppl would wait until winter and then go cut chunks out of the frozen pond or lake, haul it back to these storage house, wrap the ice blocks in hay and cloth and stack them in the house, the hay and cloth reduced the melting but most wouldn't last a long time. gave them ice during the summer though.

In a hand-cranked ice-cream maker. You put the ingredients in the tub in the middle, and then placed it in a wooden bucket. you put ice all around the tub, and poured salt on it. Then, you cranked the handle to turn the tub. The salt would cause the ice to melt, causing the cream and sugar mixture in the tub to freeze. that's about it. the ice would be collected over the winter from a local water source, such as a lake, and kept in an "ice house" for use over the spring and summer. I think the beauty of the hand-cranked ice cream maker is that you can teach the children that there is a reward for hard work.

Ice was cut from rivers and lakes in the winter and stored in caves, even in pioneer America (plains & Midwest) during the 1800s. It melted slowly, so you had to cut more than you needed and people also used less than we would today, but it was possible to have ice year-round with this method.

Ice cream in the summer was a luxury, to be sure. In fact, when Nebraska was about to become a state in the Union, a committee was trying to determine which city ought to be the new State Capital. One town served ice cream to the committee in August and was rejected for "bribery" because they used up the town's entire stock of ice until winter to get the honor of being State Capitol.

It was also customary to take advantage of hail stones when they fell -- whip up a little milk, cream, sugar and crushed fruit while it hailed, then gather up the stones quickly to make ice cream. A little sweetness before dealing with the damage.

They kept big chunks of ice sawed from lakes and rivers in the winter and kept them in ice houses covered with sawdust. Ice cream was made for imediate use in a hand turned ice cream churn. Made from the ice stored from the winter.

When i was in 5th grade i learned this one American Girl.com

When they didnt have refridgerators they had SOmething Like a box with a cube of ice in it. Ice Crean was very expensive so when the Ice man (to bring the cubes of ice to people) drove by the streets the kids would go around him and he would give out chipped ice peices to the kids