Gelato, ice cream, sorbet: an Italian job (2024)

Pizza, pasta, and Pisa. It’s what you might think of when I say Italy. I am very proud of my heritage and my culture. I am also proud of the country’s contribution to the history of ice cream. Italy is the second significant origin I believe solidified the innovation and creativity associated with ice cream’s past. I believe this because Italy is home to the gelato.

What I love about Italian gelato is the fact that is a piece of labour-intensive artisan work. In Italy, making gelato is often a skill and trade passed down through generations. There is an opportunity to easily track where the ingredients the artisan used come from. It’s here that the Italian narrative of ice cream is different to the American ice cream. American ice cream, which I love too, is mass-produced and vastly distributed around the globe as a commodity, rather than taking the artisan approach as Italians tend to do. They both have their merits.

To create a new take on ice cream here at Giapo, it is important for me to understand ice cream’s past. I believe that the history of ice cream stems from two significant origins – Italy and America – in what I call the first and second narrative of ice cream’s history. Today, I’m having a look at Italian ice cream and its history.

Origins of ice cream

The history of ice cream and gelato in Italy goes back further than the American history of ice cream.

It was 10 years ago that, with my friend Renny Aprea from the culinary department of Auckland University of Technology, we tried to track the origins of Italian gelato. From our research, the first origins of ice cream is rather a blurry one. Some account that Alexander the Great (336 B.C – 323 B.C) loved to mix snow and water with flavours like honey and nectar. There are some accounts in the Bible’s Old Testament too. Others believe ice cream came from China during the Shang Dynasty (618 – 907 A.D). It was here that Emperor King Tang of Shang tasted flavoured ice. He enjoyed the cold treat so much he sent 90 men into the mountains to collect more ice. Over time, the Chinese mixed the ice with buffalo milk, rice, and honey. They also used rice milk with sweet syrup and salt. This dessert was served to many Chinese royals as a refresher after dinner.

It was from here that the recipes were brought to Italy. Italy is believed to have combined ancient Greek, Chinese and Arab influences of ice work to create the origins of ice cream we know today. Some accounts credit the Italian merchant Marco Polo (1254 – 1324) for bringing ice cream recipes from his travels in China. Others say it was Arabian sea voyagers looking for new land. Around the beginning of the 1700s, they had found Sicily in Italy. They showed Sicilians living around Mt. Etna how to preserve ice and make it last longer. The Arabians had been building Yakhchāl (ice pits that functioned as evaporative coolers) out of heat-resistant material in the desert to store their ice since 400 BC. In a legend credited to Procopio de Coltelli and his family of boat builders, it’s said that boat builder Maestro d’Ascia was inspired by what the Arabian voyagers were doing with their ice. He’s credited to have made the first rudimental ice cream machine out of wood used for boats. As it snowed for long periods of the year in Mt Etna, he added salt to snow in a separate chamber of his machine to lower the freezing point of the water, keeping things extra cool.

It is because of this that I believe Italy gave birth to a significant narrative of ice cream.

Ice cream inventions:The sorbet

As Italy was beginning to find ways to freeze their ice recipes, the sorbet charmed European royals. One of these royals was an Italian noblewoman Catherine de Medici, the soon-to-be wife of Henri II, the future King of France.

The Medici family had set up a contest to find “the most unusual dessert you’ve ever seen”. One of the contestants was a Florentine chicken merchant named Ruggeri. He prepared ice water with sugar and won with this frozen dessert. Ruggeri became famous for his recipe.

It is widely believed Catherine introduced the dessert to France when she took many of her servant cooks with her from Florence to France. Some say she brought them to display how much better Italian cooks were than the French! One of the chefs was Ruggeri. Apparently, he missed home too much and left France after giving his thanks to the Queen. He also left with her his recipes.

The court of Medici also gave birth to another Italian delicacy: gelato.

Ice cream inventions: The gelato

A native of Florence, the creation of Italy’s famous gelato is often drawn back to Bernardo Buontalenti. Buontalenti was an artist and party planner for the Medici family.

Having been tasked with organising the welcoming of Spanish guests, he served a dish made with milk, honey, eggs flavoured with lemons, oranges, and bergamotto (citrus orange). What resulted was a version of creamed ice. The milk and eggs included in the creation gave birth to a velvety and creamy version of ice cream that spread throughout the world.

Gelato recipes like these have been passed down through generations of Italian families. The English translation of gelato is ‘frozen’.

In true Italian fashion, even after the birth of gelato, the competitions didn’t stop. In 1979, another gelato competition was held by Florentine merchants to see who could make it best. The gelato store Badiani won with a recipe made in honour of Buontalenti. Their gelato included custard, cream, and a secret ingredient.

Beyond traditional narratives

If you were to walk into a gelato store in Auckland, or even in Italy, you’ll still be greeted by a glass display case of gelato flavours. And, once it’s all scooped up, you have your icy cold treat on top of a cone or cup. Similar to ice cream’s history in America, the Italian focus has been on changing flavours. Everything else, be it the ice cream cone or the cup, remains pretty much the same across any gelateria. Of course, this means that my favourite part of Italian gelato is that it is delicious.

The Italian influence in our ice cream at Giapo is undeniable. After all, my wife and I both come from a city called Torre del Greco, located near Naples and Pompeii in Southern Italy. Like all children (at heart), I am one big gelato lover. It comes without saying that my fondest memories with my grandparents and parents are around consuming a huge amount of gelato.

It is important to recognise and celebrate where we come from and commemorate the great artisans of gelato that came before us. But, what we do at Giapo is different.

My wife and I build upon our Italian heritage and culture to create something new. In New Zealand, we’ve combined Italian tradition with ingenuity and imagination to create our own gelato creations.

Italians have held competitions throughout time to see who made the best and most unique flavours of gelato. Here at Giapo, I approach competition in a different way. This is because we don’t sell gelato like Italy or creamy ice cream like America. Instead, we give you creations from a platform of art that flips the meaning of ice cream on its head, complete with a New Zealand twist. At the heart of what we do here at Giapo is the application of ingenuity and imagination to ice cream to change its function. So, while the flavours are part of the experience, they are not everything. Our team finds new ways to innovate through design, science, technology, and imagination. We call this the third narrative of ice cream which aims to be different by the American and the Italian ice cream narratives. We don’t just change the flavours of ice cream. We are trying to change everything about the dessert.

Because it strays from the norm, some would say our ice cream is ridiculous, crazy, unconventional, or a little out of control. To me, art can be anything you want it to be. I consider myself a wannabe artist aiming to give you something you’ve never seen before. And, that is our promise to you.

The starting point of our narrative begins with what I believe are the three main reasons for buying ice cream. Customers usually purchase an ice cream to cool down on a hot day, to lick, or to satisfy a sweet craving. Many of the creations you’ll find on our menu try to change these reasons.No one customer will have the exact same reason for buying one of our creations, because it will mean something different to each one of them. Take, for instance, creations like our hot chips in a cone and the Yorkshire pudding. They certainly aren’t primarily designed to cool you down on the hot summer days of Auckland.

Our hot chips in a cone bring together ice cream and fries. Inside one of our house-made waffle cones, you’ll be served savoury fries that pair perfectly with sweet ice cream. The result? Something that we can’t quite label: is it a dessert? Is it a side dish? We’re not quite sure, but people have grown to love it.

The classic English Yorkshire pudding dish is usually filled with onion gravy as a side dish, or as a main meal with roast beef on Sundays. Here at Giapo, we bring this option together with our ice cream to create a new casing that showcases sweet and savoury.