Gelato

• 1. Introduction

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  Gelato is an Italian word that means nothing more than frozen. In Italy it covers every kind of ice cream, from the cheapest cone to the fanciest scoop. In English, though, the word has come to name one particular style: dense, silky and strongly flavored. It holds about 35% air, which is far less than American-style ice cream. That small difference changes everything about how a spoonful feels. So who first made it, and who deserves the credit? How does a frozen dessert stay smooth instead of turning icy? And how did a craft once tied to royal courts end up in machines and record-setting wafers?

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• 2. Disputed Inventors

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  Two Florentines who lived in the 16th century, Cosimo Ruggeri and Bernardo Buontalenti, are credited by some sources with inventing gelato. Ruggeri is said to have created one of the first gelati, fior di latte, for a court competition. The challenge, set at the court of Catherine de' Medici, was to present "il piatto più singolare che si fosse mai visto", which means the most singular dish that had ever been seen. Buontalenti, described as an innovator in ice conservation, made a frozen treat around 1565. It combined ice, salt, lemon, wine, milk, sugar, egg and honey, plus orange and bergamot flavouring. Other sources tell a quieter story, in which Sicilian cooks slowly adjusted the recipe for sherbet until it became the earliest form of gelato. Nobody can name a single inventor with confidence. The sources agree on one thing: the dessert soon travelled beyond Italy.

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• 3. Paris and the Public

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  In the 1530s, Catherine de' Medici took gelato with her to Paris. For a long time afterward it stayed a luxury, reserved only for nobles. That changed in 1686, when a Sicilian named Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli arrived in the French capital. He carried a gelato-making machine that had belonged to his grandfather, also named Francesco. He opened Café Procope and began selling the dessert. Procopio became a French citizen and won a royal license from Louis XIV. That license made him the only producer of the frozen dessert in the kingdom. He was among the first to sell gelato directly to ordinary customers, and his work helped spread it across the rest of Europe. For this he is sometimes called the father of Italian gelato. The invention itself, however, depends on what happens in the mixing bowl and the freezer.

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• 4. Smooth by Design

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  Artisanal gelato in Italy generally contains 6-9% butterfat, which is lower than other styles of frozen dessert. It also carries more flavoring, and that gives it an intense taste with a creamy, dense and rich texture. Sugar does much of the hidden work. It binds to the water in the mixture and interferes with the normal formation of ice crystals, so the dessert cannot freeze solid. The crystals that do form stay small, which is why the result feels smooth. Commercial producers often sweeten gelato with inverted sugar, sucrose, dextrose or xylitol, and they may add a stabilizer such as guar gum. The process starts with a custard base, mixed with milk and sugar. The mixture is heated to 85 °C (185 °F) to pasteurize it. Then it is cooled to 5 °C (41 °F) and mixed until it reaches the desired texture, before it is frozen.

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• 5. The Flavor Shelf

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  Order stracciatella and you receive fior di latte, the plain base, with chocolate chunks scattered through it. The original fior di latte has no flavor added and no eggs. That makes it the blank page on which the other flavors are written. Crema, whose name means custard, sits beside vanilla, chocolate, hazelnut, almond and pistachio among the traditional choices. Modern shops add a wide range of fruit flavors to that list. The shelf of flavors is old, but the machinery that makes it practical is surprisingly recent.

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• 6. Machines and Records

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  In 1945, in Bologna in the region of Emilia-Romagna, Bruto Carpigiani began selling gelato-making equipment. He also created the Motogelatiera, the first automated gelato machine. Its batch freezer made frozen desserts easier to store. Carpigiani remains a big manufacturer of gelato machinery. Emilia-Romagna later hosted a very different kind of showpiece. In 2011, in Rimini, the 32nd edition of the International Exhibition of Handcrafted Gelato, Pastry, and Bakery saw the creation of the largest ice cream cone in the world. It was built from over 2,000 wafers and stood 2.81 m tall. The cone weighed 70 kg. A team of seven artisans built it, led by the chocolatier Mirco Della Vecchia.

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