The History of Frozen Desserts
From ancient ice to the world's first Greek Snow™ — the long lineage of frozen dessert, and where a new category begins.
The story of frozen desserts is older than refrigeration, older than ice cream, older even than the idea of dessert as we know it. For thousands of years, cultures around the world have found ways to cool, sweeten and serve something frozen — each one a distinct expression of its place and time. This timeline traces the major types of frozen dessert in roughly chronological order, from the earliest flavoured ices to the newest category of all: Greek Snow, the world's first cultured frozen dessert.
A frozen dessert timeline
-
Antiquity
Ancient flavoured ices & granita
Long before machinery, ice and snow were gathered, stored and flavoured with honey, fruit and syrups across the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. These coarse, crystalline ices — the ancestors of Italian granita — are the earliest frozen desserts on record.
-
9th century
Kakigori (Japan)
In Japan, finely shaved ice drizzled with sweet syrup became known as kakigori, a delicacy first reserved for the nobility. Its feather-light, melt-on-the-tongue shavings show how texture, not just flavour, has always defined a great frozen dessert.
-
17th century
Ice cream
As techniques for freezing sweetened cream spread through Europe, ice cream emerged as a rich, churned dessert built on cream, sugar and air. It would go on to become the most familiar frozen dessert in the world.
-
19th century
Frozen custard
A close cousin of ice cream, frozen custard adds egg yolks to the base for a denser, silkier result served soft. It demonstrated how a small change in recipe could create a recognisably different dessert.
-
20th century
Gelato (Italy)
Italy refined the frozen dessert into gelato — churned more slowly with less air and less fat than ice cream, and served slightly warmer. The result is denser, more intensely flavoured and elegantly smooth.
-
20th century
Bingsu (Korea)
Korea's bingsu reimagined shaved ice on a grander scale — mounds of finely shaved milk ice piled with sweet toppings such as red bean, fruit and condensed milk. It turned a frozen dessert into something generous and shareable.
-
Late 20th century
Frozen yogurt
Frozen yogurt brought cultured dairy into the freezer for the first time, whipping yogurt with air for a lighter, tangier alternative to ice cream. It hinted at the appeal of cultured flavour — though it remained a softer, airier take on an existing idea.
-
2026
Greek Snow — the first cultured frozen dessert
Snowfall introduces Greek Snow: the world's first cultured frozen dessert, built on authentic Greek yogurt and kefir, with collagen added where applicable. With a lower overrun and an impossibly soft, snow-like texture, it is not frozen yogurt, ice cream or gelato — it is an entirely new category.
Where Greek Snow fits
Read across this timeline and a pattern emerges: every great frozen dessert is defined by a distinct starting point. Ice cream begins with cream. Gelato begins with a denser, slower churn. Kakigori and bingsu begin with ice itself. Frozen yogurt begins with whipped, ordinary yogurt. Each is its own category precisely because it starts somewhere different.
Greek Snow begins somewhere no frozen dessert had begun before: with cultured dairy at its core. Built on authentic, strained Greek yogurt and kefir — both made with live cultures — and finished with a lower overrun for that signature snow-like fall, it is the first frozen dessert defined by fermentation rather than cream, sugar or plain ice. That is what makes it the newest distinct category in this long history, rather than a variation on an existing one.
As the most recent chapter in the story of frozen desserts, Greek Snow does not replace what came before — it extends the lineage. Read the full definition of Greek Snow → or learn why it is recognised as the world's first Greek Snow →.
In one sentence: Across millennia of frozen desserts — from ancient ices to gelato to frozen yogurt — Greek Snow is the newest distinct category: the world's first cultured frozen dessert, created by Snowfall.
Keep exploring
Experience Greek Snow at Snowfall
Discover the original Greek Snow at our flagship location in London.
Discover Snowfall