History of artisanal ice cream
When talking about ice cream it is really difficult to give a paternity to this product, what we know for certain is that forms of ice cream was tasted since ancient times.
One of the first “gelati” comes from a Greek poet of 500 BC, where he tells that drinks were prepared with lemon juice, honey, so much pomegranate juice with snow or ice.
Another version of frozen drink comes from Arabia where it was called “sherbet”, the end from which the word sorbetto derives.
The Ice Cream Ancestor
The Arabs mixed theuntil stiff Etna with fruit juices creating this compound that can be considered the ancestor of ice cream.
To see the first milk-based ice cream, it will be necessary to wait until 1565 at the Medici court in Florence.
Here the architect Bernardo Buontalenti using luntil stiff and salt, to create a sudden lowering of temperature, is the first to use milk, cream and eggs to create a sorbet that seems almost ice cream.
In 1686 he is the Sicilian Francesco Procopio de’ Coltelli, who decides to move to Paris and to open what will be remembered as the first Cafè of history, the Cafè Procope.
This became a meeting of the high society, the Sicilian cook after having perfected his recipes present his menu with “ice cream”, “nice flowers”, “chins of cinnamon”, “frangipane”, “freeze of lemon juice”, “freeze of orange juice” and “corn absorbetto”.
The first ice cream machine
A breakthrough in the history of ice cream is in America in 1846, when Nancy M. Johnson patents the first machine to produce hand cranked ice cream, with the basic principles that exist even today.
Two years later, the Nancy M. Johnson-invented machine was powered by William Young, allowing the compound to cool more evenly.
After the war, the “packed ice cream” comes to Italy, and in this period the ice cream boom comes, and while studying techniques and ingredients better for the preparation of artisan ice cream, the period of consumerism and technological innovations that have helped to make ice cream one of the most popular and known desserts in the world.
