From The Food Encyclopedia by Jacques Rolland and Carol Sherman
A smooth frozen dessert made from fruit juice and sugar; unlike sherbet, sorbets never contain dairy products. The first recorded sorbet was a mixture of fruits crushed with snow and honey, given by Nero to his guests circa AD 60. But the Chinese should be credited with inventing a device to make sorbets and ice cream long before the birth of Christ. They poured a mixture of snow and saltpeter on the outside of a container filled with syrup, which is the same principle used in today's ice cream makers. They shared the technique with the Arabs, who began making syrups chilled with snow, called sharbats, from which the modern word is derived. The Arabs taught the Italians, and the Italians taught the French. In 1565, the artist-inventor Bernardo Buontalenti was commissioned by Catherine de' Medici to learn how to freeze a honey-based drink, which became the first sorbet for the court of France. See also ice cream, sherbet.
