Gelato: from China to Florence, history of a dessert
Italy is famous for being the birth place of gelato,
but not everyone knows that the original recipe was born in Florence.
The first ancestor of ice cream could already be found
in China around 2000 BC. It was prepared with cooked rice, spices and milk, and
then "frozen" under the snow.
The first historical documents in which ice cream is mentioned date back to Athens
in 500 BC, where the Greeks made cold drinks with honey, lemon and pomegranate
juice mixed with snow or ice. It seems like the Romans too used to consume similar
desserts during the summer months.
Fast forward to the 9th century, in Sicily
we start to see people eating something resembling a sorbet. At this time, the
peninsula was dominated by Arabs who used to consume cold drinks called sharbath, made with fruit juice and
sugar cane and used snow and salt to keep these drinks refrigerated. They had
in turn learned to make this kind of “sorbet” from the Persians.
Later, in the 14th century, Marco Polo also brought to
Europe a Chinese iced dessert made with frozen milk and fruit.
However, we’ll need to wait until the 16th century to see the triumph of gelato in Italy and other parts of
Europe.
Back then, Catherine
De' Medici launched a competition to create a new dish. It was a butcher
called Cosimo Ruggeri the person who
won, revisiting an ancient recipe that he changed making a sorbet, much more similar
to the kind we eat today, which immediately became the favorite dessert among
the nobles of Florence. When Catherine De' Medici married the future King Henry
II of France in 1533, she decided to take Ruggeri with her to court and his desserts
conquered Versailles as well.
Ice cream as we make it today, however, was invented a
bit later by another Florentine, the talented Bernardo Buontalenti. On the occasion of a party in honor of some
Spanish ambassadors, he modified Ruggeri's recipe by adding also eggs, milk and
a splash of wine, creating the cool and creamy dessert that we all love.
The recipe was perfected throughout the centuries and
today Italian artisanal gelato is recognized as a delicacy all around the
world.