Put it on ice

IN 1892, Auguste Escoffier, head chef at The Savoy, created a peach dish for opera singer Dame Nellie Melba and presented it nestling inside the wings of a swan carved out of ice. In the early 1900s, natural ice was shipped from frozen lakes in cold countries, stored in vast wells under London docks and delivered to hotels. When they had finished making sorbets and cooling wine, artistic chefs would create salvers and serving bowls out of the leftovers. Later, modern refrigeration dispensed with the need for block ice and, by the end of the Second World War, ice sculpture had vanished from the kitchens of grand hotels.

In the mid 1970s, Duncan Hamilton was asked by his boss, head chef at the original Hyde Park Hotel in Knightsbridge, London SW1, if he could make an ice sculpture