The History of Gelato

The ancestor of gelato appeared in China around 2000 BC and was prepared with very cooked rice, spices, and milk. It was then buried in snow to solidify.

During the Middle Ages, inspired by Marco Polo’s stories of his Chinese journeys, cold desserts made with milk and fruit juices started to become popular.

The first appearance of ice-cold drinks or desserts similar to gelato occurred in Sicily during the Arab domination in the 9th century. The Arabs used the snow from Mount Etna and the surrounding mountains to freeze the drinks in containers, which were then sweetened with sugar imported from Persia.

But who invented the gelato that we all know? We have to wait until the Renaissance and the sixteenth century to witness its birth.

Bernardo Buontalenti, an architect at the court of Caterina de’ Medici in Florence, is credited with the invention of milk or cream-based gelato. Around the year 1565, Buontalenti produced the first prototype of gelato by adding salt to the ice to lower the temperature of the ingredients below zero. This gelato, called “Crema Fiorentina,” was made with milk, honey, egg yolk, and a touch of wine. It immediately conquered the palate of the entire court of the Medici in Florence, and Caterina de’ Medici also exported it to France. Thus, Buontalenti can be considered one of the official inventors of gelato as well as of zuccotto, a well-known Italian dessert. There is still a lot of Italy in the modern history of gelato, as well as a lot of migration.

At the end of the eighteenth century, Filippo Lenzi opened the first gelateria in the United States and contributed to the spread of this delicious dessert in the country, stimulating the birth of the gelato maker (first manual, thanks to Nancy Johnson, then mechanical with a crank, patented by William Young, and finally the motorized version at the beginning of the 1900s).

The waffle cone for ice cream was invented in the US, according to many sources, by the Italian Italo Marchioni, who was looking for a method to serve ice cream in cups that were not made of glass. They easily broke or were not returned by customers after consuming the product, resulting in an economic loss. Thanks to Marchioni, gelato became a snack food, the first step towards the great revolution that made this dessert consumable at any time and place.

In Italy, manufactured ice cream on a stick arrived in the post-war period, when the “Mottarello al fiordilatte” (1948) was launched, followed after a few years by the legendary “Cornetto Algida,” the first manufactured ice cream wafer cone. The evolution of household appliances and the economic boom led to the widespread use of the household freezer, which in the 1950s began to host the “Barattolino Sammontana,” the first family-sized ice cream container, leading to today’s proliferation of ice cream of every type and flavor.