Gelato 101
History, Gelato vs Ice Cream, How to Spot a Good One...
When I lived in Florence, I was lucky enough to live right next to Badiani, the oldest Gelateria in Florence and I was happily taken aback when I moved to London and found out the only other locations in the world were in my new city?! The popular flavor served there is called Buontalenti, named after the inventor of gelato himself…
Gelato, translating directly to frozen in Italian, was first served in the mid 1500s. Let’s rewind a bit and quickly run through the origins of frozen desserts in general.
Icy History
Overall, the history of an ice cold dessert is extremely convoluted as it was born in different regions across the globe at distinct times. What we know for sure is that there were many delectable frozen iterations of this cold treat before gelato came about. Initially, this type of dessert was basically just mashed ice or snow and fruit and reserved for the powerful and wealthy.
There is evidence as early as 5000 (!) years ago that in Mesopotamia there was even an ice storage system… ice was collected from mountains kilometers away and then kept cool to later combine with honey and wine as a sweet, cool drink served during banquets.
A few thousand years later in Ancient Egypt there was also evidence of sweet ice being eaten! Archaeologists uncovered 2 silver cups in a tomb, one being specifically for ice, the other for sweet fruit. When combined these two became a scrumptious fruity slushy. Egyptian Pharaohs were also known to offer highly esteemed guests shaved ice topped with fruit juice.
Famous figures throughout history have also had a penchant for a frozen dessert. Born in 356 BCE, Alexander the Great was an avid lover of a snow, fruit, and honey dessert during his military expeditions. Shortly after, Emperor Nero was known to frequently send slaves to get snow in the nearby mountains. To keep this snow cold on its way into the city, it was actually covered in straw?!
The first somewhat “creamy” ice that was ever recorded was in China in 200BCE when a mixture of rice, milk, and spices was packed into snow to keep cold. Shortly after during the Tang dynasty in the 600s CE, we see another cousin of the modern-day ice cream appear. Under King Tang of Shang, 94 “ice men” were charged of heating buffalo milk, fermenting it, adding in some flour and camphor and then finally refrigerating the resulting mixture. And there you have it, ice cream!
Although the history is convoluted and vast, we simply have to recognize Ancient Persia in the creation of sorbet, gelato, and ice cream as a whole. By the year 400BCE, the Persians had already created the yakhchāl, an underground space to keep ice frozen, which directly translates to “well of ice”. I mean just look at the photo above, these are massive! You can even visit some in modern day Iran. Back in the day, ice was used primarily to make “sharbat”, a type of slushy-like beverage and the linguistic origin of the word sorbet, with ice, fruit juice, and fruit pieces. Once this sharbat was dispersed throughout the world, it became known as sorbet.
After the Muslim conquest of Persia in 633AD, sorbet became even more similar to the one we have today. You may know that Sicily is know for their granitas, unsurprising as these stem directly from the Arab sorbet! When they arrived to this island at the end of the 9th century, they brought sugarcane with them, a key ingredient for modern day ice cream.
Sicilians created their own version of sorbet using snow from to top of the mountains like Mount Etna, Europe’s tallest volcano. There was even a specific job for the men that collected this snow - nivaroli. Another volcano you may have heard of is Mount Vesuvius… Although it erupted nearly 600 years earlier than Arab sorbet arriving in Italy, there was already evidence of storefronts specializing in snow and honey sales in the city of Pompeii!
So what’s the difference between granita and sorbet?
Granita is crunchy ice made with sugar and fruit juice.
Sorbet, on the other hand, is a frozen smooth and homogenous puree of fruit and with no crunchy shaved ice.
If you visit Sicily today, you can’t miss trying Brioche con Gelato (see below), a fluffy, buttery brioche bun cut in half and stuffed with refreshing, cool, and creamy gelato.
The Medici Era - Tuscan Gelato
Later, during the Medici era in the 1500s, there was an architect named Bernardo Buontalenti who frequented the court. He was honestly iconic he designed the Boboli Gardens as well as the Palazzo Pitti (stay tuned for my Florence city guide).
Significant, however, is that Buontalenti was not only an architect but also a brilliant party planner. At the end of one of his big banquets for the Spanish crown at the Medici palace, his team of chefs served a frozen cream for dessert to show off their new prized spice, “sugar”. Clearly, as anyone who has just tried gelato for the first time, the guests, including the Spanish King at the time, were thrilled and Buontalenti’s name went down in history.
This “Buontalenti” flavor at Badiani is made solely from cream, milk, sugar, and eggs.
It’s simple but you taste a different element of the mix with each bite and the silky texture make it the perfect mouthfeel.
It wasn’t until Catherine de Medici, however, that gelato spread across Europe. As the newly appointed Queen of France, she wanted to bring some flavors from her past with her to her new country and hired Florentine chefs to work int he kitchen. They, of course, had learnt the art of gelato making and began constantly churning to display the special dessert. After each respective banquet, her international guests remembered gelato and sought to recreate it back in their homelands.
Around his time, Francesco Procopio Cutò (or dei Coltelli)*, a Sicilian chef left his homeland for Paris. He had just inherited an “sorbet machine” from his inventor grandfather and sought to share the wealth. Once settled in Paris, he opened the first ever literary cafe in Paris, Café Procope**, the oldest continually-functioning café in the world. Evidently, his gelato became a hit and also became more accessible for the every day man rather than a treat solely reserved for the rich.
*in French, knives translate to couteaux… The French misunderstood his Italian last name Cutò, so he also became known as “dei Coltelli”, the Italian word for knives. Iconic I’m so obsessed.
**I’ve been to Café Procope and I did not know this story until researching for this newsletter. SO FUN I LOVE LEARNING?!
End Bits
Anyways, I could go on forever with examples (ie Kagikori, Japanese shaved ice, was first recorded in the Heian period in 800CE), but let’s wrap this up.
Prior to modern refrigeration, it was obviously extremely difficult and labor intensive to keep ice cold which is why ice cream was really primarily for the upper classes. There were many steps in ice cream technology - the first being the addition of salt to ice, the second being placing a bowl into the salt and ice bowl, the third being a manual crank to stir the contents of said bowl patented by Mrs Nancy Johnson in the US in 1843. Eventually German engineer Carl von Linde developed tools for industrial refrigeration, and thus the mass production of ice cream could begin.
You may have heard of ice cream sundaes? Did you know that these were invented when it became illegal to sell ice-cream sodas on a Sunday in the late 1800s? Supposedly this dessert was too decadent for a Sunday so it became banned in the city of Evanston in Illinois. Some shop owners brilliantly decided to replace the soda with syrup (way less decadent??) and named the dessert “Ice Cream Sunday” which eventually became “Sundae” as to not upset members of the church…
Gelato vs Ice Cream - What’s The Difference?
Taste, texture, density, serving…
Although both gelato and ice cream have the same base ingredients, gelato has more milk (less cream and fewer eggs if using) so it has a lower fat percentage. Due to this, it’s commonly served a bit warmer than your regular ice cream because it can keep a nice smooth texture.
Further, gelato is churned more slowly than ice cream which results in a thicker dessert. When churning ice cream more rapidly, more air is able to make its way into the mixture leaving it a bit fluffier! That’s why if you’ve ever tasted a cheap ice cream and wondered why it was so fluffy, it’s because you can really expand the volume with a quick churn… Another reason why gelato usually costs more than ice cream, as there is technically more “product” in a spoonful of silky gelato compared to an airy spoonful of ice cream.
Lastly, you don’t order gelato by scoop amount but rather by size!
How to Spot a Good Gelato in Italy
No Nos
High mounds, means it’s fluffy!
Bright colors
Yes Yes
Metal lids (or at least flat tops)
Meh looking colors - your pistachio should look nearly grey and mint should look white/creamy
High mounds are a no no, the temperature will be off! Metal tins (ideally with lids) are a yes yes! This kind of container is called a carapina. Even though you won’t be able to see the ice cream, it is all kept at the same temp hidden away under its lid.
Color and smell matter! Taste is salty, sweet, bitter, acid and umami. Flavor on the other hand is taste, color, texture, smell and memory… Any gelateria, even if the gelato is covered, will have a subtle, sweet, creamy and fresh smell.
I will leave you with one last nonscientific tip - although there is absolutely no basis for this, I love seeing certain flavors handwritten because it makes me believe that that flavor was a spur of the moment one! Whether the ingredients were fresh at the market or the idea came to the gelato maker overnight, that flavor usually rocks. Now this is also probably just me being insane as always but I like my imaginary ranking system.
ANYWAYS IM IN ITALY SO IM GONNA GO AND GET SOME GELATO NOW!
I hope you enjoyed this week’s newsletter - despite researching for weeks, I thoroughly enjoyed learning about this all so I hope you did too!
Hooray only a few more weeks until The Condiment Book AH!
There's a place in Baltimore called Pitango Gelato. The truest to genuine Italian gelato that I've ever had in the US. They have the metal containers with lids, too. Sooooo good. I live in Seattle now and still miss it. Seattle has a great food scene but doesn't have great gelato options, sadly. I sometimes dream of going to gelato university in Italy and bringing the genuine stuff back. But, a lot of it has to do with local ingredients and surroundings. Italian gelato is delicious when you're eating it there in part because you're eating it surrounded by Italy, its architecture, terroir, language, fountains, etc. All other things equal, place has a psychological affect on the food experience. Sometimes, you simply cannot replicate it.
Did I Just learn history via a frozen treat??
Thanks Claire