Ice cream is the Italian dessert most loved by Italians and foreigners.
In Italy alone there are 39,000 ice cream shops, in Europe 65,000. Yet, how many know his story?
Ice cream has a history of contamination, merging with Italian history and becoming its emblem. The true origin of the first example of ice cream is unknown, it is thought to date back over 3000 years and to be Asian.
Ice cream as we know it today began to develop in Italy during the Renaissance, precisely at the Medici court in Florence. The Medici, very wealthy patrons, financed a competition with the aim of producing the best cold dessert in the world. The winner was Cosimo Ruggeri, an alchemist, who created a cold dessert based on egg custard. In 1565 the Medici recruited the architect and artist Bernardo Buontalenti to organize the reception of the King of Spain in the city. It was on that occasion that Buontalenti prepared a dessert that is considered the ancestor of Italian ice cream: a cold cream based on milk, egg yolk, honey and wine flavored with bergamot, lemon and orange. The dessert was a huge success, but due to the high costs of ice and salt it remained a dessert for the rich.
One hundred years later, around 1686, the Sicilian chef Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli created the first mixture to produce and package ice cream. The story of Procopio dei Coltelli is a story of emigration. The restaurateur first emigrated from his Aci Trezza, near Catania, to move to Palermo, perfecting the use of an ice-making machine invented by his grandfather. From there he then emigrated to Paris, where he took over a café that took his name, Café Procope, and which became one of the most appreciated places by the Parisian nobility. The Sun King himself tasted the new milk ice cream. Procopio's invention was so successful that Louis XIV awarded him an exclusive concession for the production of ice cream.
In 1694 Antonio Latini from the Marche region, a chef in the service of the viceroy of Naples, wrote the first known recipe for milk sorbet.
Almost another century passed before Italian ice cream crossed the Atlantic and was exported to the United States. In New York, the Genoese Giovanni Bosio opened the first ice cream shop in 1770.
Again, another Italian, Italo Marchioni, was responsible for the invention of the first ice cream cone in the United States. It was 1868.
Between the First and Second World Wars, in 1927, the first automatic ice cream maker was created by Otello Cattabriga from Bologna.
Is there an ice cream city? Yes, it is Longarone, nestled in the Dolomites, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The first ice cream fair began here in 1959 and the International Artisan Ice Cream Exhibition is located here.
Many are the Longarone families of ice cream makers who emigrated after the Second World War and contributed to the spread of ice cream throughout the world. Innovation, creativity, diversity and contamination.
The ingredients of the history of ice cream are the ingredients of Italian culture.
