14、No one knows who made the first ice cream. Some people think that water ices and milk ices may have been made by the Chinese between three thousand and four thousand years ago. In time, the dish reached India. The Indians, in turn, may have passed on the secret to the Arabs and Persians. The Persians called their dish Sharbat, from which our word sherbet（冰冻果子露）comes.
Marco Polo, an Italian who traveled widely in the thirteenth century, noted that he found the Chinese had long been making ices out of fruit juices and milk. From the fourteenth century on, ices became popular, first in Venice and then throughout Italy.
In 1533, when Catherine de Medicis left Italy to marry the future King Henry Ⅱof France, she took her cooks with her. They made desserts the French had never tasted before. Among them was "ice cream". For each day of the wedding festivities(庆祝活动，庆典) Catherine's cooks prepared a different flavor of her favorite dessert-"ice cream."
At first ice cream was a luxury(奢侈品) in France. Only rich people had money to buy it. Then, in 1660, a young man from Sicily, Francisco Procopio, arrived in Paris. He opened a shop that sold ice cream at prices people could afford. Procopio's"ice-cream parlor(店堂)" became so popular that other shops were opened.
About 1640, King Charles I introduced ice cream to England. He had heard it was popular in Italy and France. He served ice cream for dessert at a banquet(宴会). The surprise dish was a great success. The King ordered his cook to keep the recipe(制作方法) for ice cream a secret. Charles felt that only royalty(王室) should serve the dessert. But the secret soon leaked out. Ice cream quickly became popular in England too.