It has often been said that the Chinese invented ice cream and that marco polo brought the idea to Europe in the thirteenth century. This is more myth than historical fact backed by evidence but it can be sated with some confidence that ice cream was invented in China in the first milenium. The process of freezing liquids by immersing them in a mixture of ice and salt, which react together to lower the temperature of the mixture below freezing point, was also invented in the distant past - it was first documented in the thirteenth century.