ice cupboard

plural ice cupboards

1. datedA large cupboard or room kept at a temperature lower than room temperature for long-term, stable storage of perishable foods.

   The activity of the yeast extract does not last long; it had vanished after being kept five days in an ice cupboard, but lasted for two weeks when mixed with cane-sugar solution.

   1897, Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry, volume 16, page 157

   1 more example

   At one end were five service lifts, and at the other an ice cupboard where we stored milk and butter. When you went into the ice cupboard you dropped a hundred degrees of temperature at a single step; it used to remind me of the hymn about Greenland's icy mountains and India's coral strand.

   1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter XI, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz […], →OCLC

   Synonyms: coolroom