Gelato called to “frozen” from Italian. Gelato is very diffenrent from ice cream
History of gelato?
Gelato called to “frozen” from Italian. Italian gelato is a frozen treat from Italy which was originally created in the 16th century. Historians are not sure who originally invented it, but the one of the most popular versions of the story is Bernardo Buontalenti, a native of Florence, created a form of the modern gelato. He impressed the court of Catherina dei Medici with his delicious frozen treat. From there is spread across Italy and then the rest of Europe. Shops began opening and the tradition passed from father to son for generations. This continues into today, all across the world.
Gelato came to the United States in 1770. It was introduced to the Americas by Italian native Giovanni Biasiolo. Unfortunately, it was around the same time that the hand crank freezer was invented and ice cream overshadowed gelato. In fact, historians don’t see much about this Italian dessert again until the 1900s. Now it’s become incredible popular across not only Italy and the United States, but across the world!
Its origins, in fact, trace back to ancient Rome. During the Renaissance, gelato became a cherished delicacy among Italian nobility, and its preparation secrets were closely guarded by the master gelato makers of the time.
Over three thousand years ago gelato got its start when people in ancient Rome would gather snow and ice from the mountains to combine with fruit or other flavouring to make a delicious frosty dessert. Gelato as we know it today became the specialty of artisans in northern Italy in the 1920s and 1930s.
How is Gelato Different from Ice Cream?
You might wonder how these sweet treats are different. Gelato has much less butterfat, about two thirds less. It is also is more dense because is churned slowly and air is not whipped into the product, like ice cream. This makes for a much more flavorful final product. Although this Italian treat contains less butterfat, it contains more sugar. One fact about the differences between gelato and ice cream that you may not know is that gelato is served at a slightly higher temperature than ice cream. Normally, it is usually stored at 0° to 10°F, and served at 10° to 20°F, while ice cream can be stored in a deep-freeze of -20°F or colder.
Electro Freeze offers gelato machines for shops who want to treat their customers to this delicious Italian dessert. Contact us today to learn more about our products as well as what we have available. We have machines for ice cream, frozen yogurt, frozen cocktails, milkshakes, and more!
It’s hard to imagine that Italian volcanoes Etna and Vesuvius have caused such an eruption in the 21st century America, seeing as these locations helped contribute to the development of frozen desserts more than 5000 years ago. First, Asian cultures discovered they could consume crushed ice and flavorings. Five hundred years later, it became a custom for Egyptian pharaohs to offer their guests a cup of ice sweetened with fruit juices. Romans later began the ritual of eating the ice of the volcanoes Etna and Vesuvius, covering it with honey. Then came the Italian Renaissance during the 14th century, when gelato was officially developed by famous artist and architect Bernardo Buontalenti.
From that point, gelato began dominating taste buds all over the world, including the U.S. beginning in 1770 after being introduced to this continent by Italian native Giovanni Biasiolo. At this point, there were two types of gelato – one made by mixing water with fruits such as lemon and strawberries (also known as Sorbetto), and another made by mixing milk with cinnamon, pistachio, coffee or chocolate. But due to the invention of the hand-crank freezer, and the subsequent birth of the industrial ice cream industry, gelato would take a back seat to American-made ice cream (which contains more air), and would not begin to re-emerge in popularity again until the late 1900s. However, as it stands today, gelato is one of the hottest commodities on the frozen dessert market, writing a new chapter in culinary history as one of the greatest success stories in dessert innovation.
The origins of gelato
The origins of gelato go back 12,000 years when, in Mesopotamia, slave runners traveled up to 100 kilometers to collect ice and snow used to cool drinks served during royal banquets and religious ceremonies. During the 11th century, the Arabs developed shrb, “sugar syrup”, a base for making fruit sorbets, medical herbs, spices and flowers. Shrb was the predecessor of sorbet, which became very popular in Sicily when it was under Arab rule; the Arabs grew in fact as many as 400 different types of flowers to flavor their sorbets.
The modern history of gelato
The “modern” history of gelato begins in the Renaissance with alchemist Cosimo Ruggieri, who is credited with creating the first gelato flavor at the court of the Medici family in Florence, the fior di latte. The architect Bernardo Buontalenti seems to have invented the egg cream gelato (gelato alla crema d’uovo); Francesco Redi and Lorenzo Magalotti made gelato famous by singing its praises and describing its ingredients. The Sicilian Francesco Procopio Cutò made gelato available to all when he opened Café Le Procope in Paris in 1686 and started selling it to the public; before then, gelato and sorbets were food for the rich because ice and salt were expensive and, therefore, only served in private residences. In the 19th century, the Neapolitan doctor Filippo Baldini wrote a treatise where he stated that gelato and sorbets are good both for the body and mind.
Gelato in the 20th century
The 20th century marks the birth of the gelato cone and the mechanization of production techniques. It was an American who built the first automatic ice cream machine, Emery Thompson, in 1904, the motorized batch freezer. During the early 1940s, Bruto Carpigiani from Bologna worked on the design of a new gelato machine which would be cleaner, faster and more efficient than the others then available. Today, Carpigiani is one of the biggest producers of gelato-making machines worldwide. From the 1950s on, gelato starts to become a flagship of the Made in Italy, with most innovations taking place here. Thanks to better technology that made gelato safer and easier to produce, gelato makers were able to concentrate on the creative side of their trade, with more and more flavors being invented.