Lady Anne Fanshawe’s Receipt Book contains not only a range of fascinating historic treatments for illnesses and ailments but also some wonderful culinary recipes too. She even records her recipe for ice cream!

This recipe from the mid 1660s is the earliest known recipe for ice cream and is clear enough to be replicated today – although you might want to skip the ‘Ambergreece’, a grey waxy material produced by the digestive system of a sperm whale.

To Make Icy Cream

Take three pints of the best cream, boyle it with a blade of Mace or else perfume it with orang flower water or Ambergreece, sweeten the Cream, with sugar let it stand till it is quite cold, then put it into Boxes, ether of Silver or tinn, then take, Ice chopped into small peeces and put it into a tub and set the Boxes in the Ice covering them all over, and let them stand in the Ice two hours, and the Cream Will come to be Ice in the Boxes, then turn them out into a salvar with some of the same seasoned Cream, so sarve it up to the Table

Image: Ice Cream recipe by Lady Ann Fanshawe. Published: 1651-1707. © Wellcome Library, London via Wikimedia Commons