Elizabeth David's social history of ice starts in 17th-century Italy, and Florence in particular. She quotes from contemporary accounts to describe the intriguing snow and ice pits, and describes the huge Florentine banquets which usually ended with spectacular pyramids of ice and fruit. David tells the story of Francesco Procopio who, in 1686, established what is considered to be the world's first cafe, Le Cafe Procope, in Saint-Germain-des-Pres in Paris; she recounts the reactions of travellers in the 18th and 19th centuries first seeing the ice-trenches covered with pyramid-shaped straw roofs, and tells how India depended on its ice being shipped out from Boston. The British fishing industry was revolutionized after a Scot visiting China in 1785 saw the fishermen drawing their supplies of snow and ice from store houses situated along the coast, and transporting their catch packed in ice over long distances inland. Within a few years, salmon and other fine fish was travelling in similar fashion from Scotland to London all the year round. On the domestic front, Elizabeth David tells of the story of James Gunter, who founded the ice cream and confectionary business in the early years of the 19th century and which for so long and so famously bore his name. David ends this history of ice at the outbreak of World War II.

• Part 1 Florence: snows of yesteryear
• Buontalenti's ice pools
• the "quinta essentia"
• shine white diamant ice. Part 2 Ice-houses and sherbets - tales from Turkey and the Medici legend. Part 3 Perpetual snow. Part 4 Icemen of the 17th century: table jewellery
• a trifling invention. Part 5 Ices for the Sun King: Audiger's tale
• snow or concrete?. Part 6 The limonadiers of Paris and the Cafe Procope. Part 7 Neiges, sorbets, glaces, fromages. Part 8 Ices under the volcano: cinnamon bricks and candied eggs
• the sherbet trade with the Levant
• in sickness and in health
• the queen's ice pail maker
• days of snow and ices. Part 9 A Persian tale: ice for Isfahan
• luxuries for the road
• snow upon the desert's dusty face
• snow for a fever
• ices in porcelain basins. Part 10 Cathay to Caledonia. Part 11 To India's coral strand: ice by elephant, ice by tribute
• ice by evaporation, ice by absorption
• Calcutta's crystal palace
• better than a doctor
• the ice was here, the ice was there
• forgotten things. Part 12 Ices in a cold climate: winter's dark prisons
• cutting the solid pond
• ten thousand ice cellars
• Moscow and London. Part 13 The London confectioners: "all sorts of ice"
• from Greenland's icy seas
• Trevithick et al v. Wenham Lakes
• bomba
• shapes of crystal. Part 14 To cool the air - ice pillars and lily ponds.