Italian Ice Cream
I scream: “Gelati!!!”
I still haven’t found a food product that we are not claiming as 100% Italian. Take pasta and Pizza for example, or the ice cream,. But even if we haven’t invented these products – nobody can deny we are very famous for our coni Gelato, sorbetti and semifreddi (the ice-cream cakes).
Sorbets are all about fruit, water and sugar. Premium ice creams are insstead made with fresh cream (not condensed or powdered milk), real eggs, and natural flavorings.
The word Sorbet seems to come from the Arabic word “scherbet” or sweet snow. A kind of ice-cream was invented in China about 200 BC when a milk and rice mixture was frozen by packing it into snow. But also the Greeks and Romans used to savour fruit purees mixed with snow and sweetened with honey. Roman emperors sent slaves to the top of the Vesuvio and Etna tops to bring back fresh snow which was then flavoured and served as an early form of ice-cream sorbet.
The explorer, Marco Polo (1254-1324), is believed to have seen ice-creams being made during his trip to China and introduced them to Italy.
The father of modern ice cream was a 15th-century Florentine architect, Bernardo Buontalenti. Caterina dei Medici introduced the gelato in her court in France. But the real gelato business man was a Palermo entrepreneur, Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli, who opened an innovative cafe’ in Paris during the reign of Luigi XIV, where rich people could enjoy Italian gelati in his Café Parisienne.
The King of England, Charles I, is supposed to have offered his chef £500 a year to keep his ice-cream recipe a secret from the rest of England.
Another Italian, Filippo Lenzi, is credited with opening the first American ice cream shop in 1777. And because of him now Americans are today the largest consumers of ice creams: 32 kilos a year per head. The British and Russians follow with 25 kilos per head. While the Italians only buy 10 kilos of gelato per head. But I am sure we eat lots of home made ice cream and sorbet which do not make statistic.
In Italy there are 32,000 firms that produce 560,000 tonnes of Italian gelato and generate a turnover more than 4 billion euro.