Song Dynasty cold drink shops sold a wide variety of cold drinks, including ice and snow, cool syrup, medicinal papaya, ice and snow licorice soup, and various thirsty waters.

Ice snow is the simplest cold drink to make. In winter, people take a basin of water, add various honey, juice and other seasonings to the water and stir evenly. Then take out the basin of water and freeze it into ice, then store it in an underground ice cellar. When it is taken out next summer, it can be divided into sweet and sweet sorbets of different shapes.

The method of making cool paste is a little more complicated. Put rice and water into a pot and boil it into a thick paste, then pour the sticky substance in the pot into a bucket and wait for a few days. After a few days, the sticky rice will become fermented, and the impurities and thick matter in it will be filtered out, leaving only the rice soup. Then pour the rice soup into a container and chill it. After a while, it becomes a cup of sweet and sour rice juice.

Medicinal papaya is more complicated. You need to pickle the papaya with honey and several Chinese medicinal materials, then put them into water to boil over high heat, and then simmer slowly over low heat. After boiling it into a pot of white papaya pulp, take it out and let it cool, and finally mix it with ice water. The taste should be a bit like the current smoothie or slush.

It can be found that the production and storage of all cold drinks in the Song Dynasty were inseparable from ice cubes. However, there were no refrigerators in ancient times, and the ice cubes would melt soon in the hot summer. Therefore, people in the Song Dynasty would choose to hire people to cut ice on the frozen river in winter, and store the cut ice in underground ice cellars in advance. Ice cellars were still very common in ancient times.

In the summer, take out the stored ice cubes and put them into a specially made double-layered wooden barrel. The partitions of this barrel are made of white copper, so the ice cubes can be put in for several days. None will melt. After making the cold drink, you can put the cold drink into this wooden barrel for storage.

Of course, although there were many kinds of cold drinks in the Song Dynasty, they were not safe. Because the ice cubes used to make cold drinks are cut directly from the river and have not been disinfected, they will hide a lot of bacteria and microorganisms, and eating too much can easily cause diarrhea.