In his trip report, Christian from Toronto says why don't we have Gelato in North America? And it got me thinking. Isn't the Gelato in Italy the same as what we call Ice Cream? Are the ingredients in Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream (cream, skim milk, liquid sugar, water, pistachios, egg yolks, natural flavor, coconut oil, guar gum, salt, carrageenan - I just happened to have a carton of Ben and Jerry's Pistachio on hand) that much different from the ingredients in Italian Gelato?

Sometimes we get the fruit gelato to avoid having the milk/cream - do they make the fruit gelatos usually with just fruit and sugar?

Any Gelato experts out there?

Pauline from Slow Travelers

Faith Willinger briefly discusses the differences here. (warning- annoying music)

Amy in MA
Amy's House Exchange

[This message was edited by Amy on October 05, 2002 at 01:59 PM.]

Historically ice cream was invented by the Medici's architect Buontalenti, when he took the Italian dessert of pastry cream ( eggs, sugar and milk) and froze it.
He followed the Arab tradition of Sharbet,frozen lemon ice.

I think that one of the nice things about the Italian ice cream is that it is served at a lower temperature and is softer. When you take it home though and put it in your freezer, it gets firmer and isn't as nice as it is in the shops.

Judy Divina Cucina
Florence
Everyone should try being Italian at least once a day!!

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Gelato, a combination of whole milk, eggs, sugar, and natural flavoring -- or fresh fruit and sugar in the fruit flavors -- is a less firmly frozen, softer, more intensely flavored and colored creation, essential to the Italian summer.

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From Faith Willinger's Eating in Italy (see link in Amy's post)

So the Ben & Jerry's uses cream, skim milk and eggs yolks and freezes it more to make ice cream, but Gelato is whole milk and is less frozen?

Our friend traveling with us last month in Italy cannot eat dairy products so she asked at gelato places for "sorbetto" and was frequently told they had none, but I saw that they had several fruit flavors and thought they were without dairy. Is there a difference between ordering sorbetto and fruit gelato? Faith Willinger says fruit gelato is just fruit and sugar - no dairy.

Pauline from Slow Travelers

Often pureed fruit is added to the cream base for fruit ice creams, the milkless version is the Sicilian Granita's as at Carabe' in Florence and then he also has his fruit sorbetti, but again Sicily has a heavy Arab heritage in the food, Right now there is a cous-cous festival in Sicily!
I have recently seen Soy based ice creams being offered, and also frozen yogurt... and then yogurt flavored ice cream.

Judy Divina Cucina
Florence
Everyone should try being Italian at least once a day!!

Although this will not be about Italy, it will be about gelato: we do have gelato in Toronto, excellent gelato, in fact. Numero Uno must be La Paloma Gelateria, then Gelato Gelato, Carneval de Venezia, Tre Fontane, Hollywood Gelato, Tutto Gelato, La Sem, etc.

But La Paloma is the best, on St. Clair Avenue West (no rhyme intended), in Toronto's Little Italy, inhabited or frequented by over 650,000 Canadians of Italian ancenstry. And they, particularly the older ones, not yet corrupted by Baskins Robbins (which I like a lot too...), they know their gelato.

Doru

Maureen and I have been talking about adding a section to the web site about Italy in North America. Descriptions and photos of Italian neighborhoods, etc. This list of Toronto Gelato places would be good there.

It made me remember a good gelato place in Vancouver - Venezia up on like 40th or something on the east side. Liz, do you know this place?

PAULINE POST

Pauline from Slow Travelers

We enjoyed gelato often in Italy. It was a familiar taste to us, being very close indeed to our Wisconsin frozen custard. The flavor variety is far greater in Italy, and there's no melone flavor here, but the texture reminded us of home. I always thought that if a recipe contained eggs (particularly a cooked recipe), it's really frozen custard.

Ahh....gelato!
We can find good ice cream here, in North America, even in grocery stores. BUT, it's still not the same. Whatever gelato is made of, it's so much better than ice cream. In Toronto, i have tried two stores who advertise "authentic gelato" and it was nowhere near as good as what I had in Florence or Venice. I have yet to try the on that Doru (we have to meet, sometime, Doru!)talks about in Little Italy, but when I do, I will let you guys know!
P.S. COCONUT!!!!!!!!

Christian

Pauline, I think you misunderstood. Gelato has dairy unless it is soy based. There are ices that have no dairy, but they don't look like gelato at all. I think as I read it that fruit gelatos have fruit added to the dairy, fruit sorbettos do not.
There are different legal standards for ice cream in the US, if you have a different recipe you can't call it ice cream. Frozen custard gets whipped as it is frozen. Homemade certainly does not have carageenan in it, but often has eggs. They emulsify and make a richer mouthfeel.
In Italy you can call lots of things gelato, some of which are really rotten, like most of those frozen treats at bars. But the recipe for homemade gelato in the cooking magazines is almost like my mother's homemade ice cream, except that my mother used quarts and quarts of rich unpasteurized cream and you can even smell that before you taste it.
Inspired by Cristina and Bill, I tired melone at the local gelato artiginale. It was superb! So I tried it at another place that buys their ice cream and it was artifial and nasty tasting.

For our latest trip to Italy, I have set as a goal "one gelato, due palline" daily. Alas, I failed in 23.81% of the days (OK, no gelato in 5 out of 21 days), for a variey of reasons.
With memories on my taste buds still fresh, I can say the range of gelato quality is very wide even in its native country (OK, we all know the gelato actually comes from North Africa or the Orient, but Italy is it flag bearer...).

Even in Italy often the quality of the gelato depends on the time of day (late evening gelato choices are more restricted and the gelato more limpid), weather (self-explanatory), producer (it is tough to make sure it is artigianale or chain-supplier; are you going to go in the back and check?), etc.

There is also all this yogourt and soya-based stuff, which Italians now offer because they know where the tourist money comes from: mostly from people on a guilt trip because they ate too much at the restaurant around the corner...

Still, I found places with wonderful gelato and I defined a favourite. This will remain in suspense until I gather my wits, notes and receipts and get around to report on the whole trip.

(N.B. Christian, sure, when you're in town, lunch at La Bruschetta and gelato at La Paloma; they are within walking distance, exercise being an absolute necessity after one has visited either of them).

Doru

There are 2 main differences between ice cream and gelato. Ice cream has at least 10% butterfat while gelato has under 8%. The silky texture comes from the 'overrun' which means the amount of air pumped into the confection. Ice cream has 50-100% of overrun, and gelato less than 20%. These differences make for a denser product and a more intense flavor.

Yum,

Karen

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Pauline, I think you misunderstood. Gelato has dairy unless it is soy based. There are ices that have no dairy, but they don't look like gelato at all. I think as I read it that fruit gelatos have fruit added to the dairy, fruit sorbettos do not.

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So how do you order a fruit "gelato" that has no dairy in it? Do you ask for sorbetto? Do all those fruit flavor gelato have dairy in them?

Pauline from Slow Travelers

Are any of you familiar with Pamela Sheldon Johns' book "GELATO, Italian Ice Creams, Sorbetti & Granite"?
Ten Speed Press, ISBN #1-58008-197-5 (1999)

It is a charming little cookbook/history book. The first 30 pages are an introductory history. Then there are 70 pages of recipes, and finally a few pages for technique, a flavor glossary, and a resource list.

There are 17 Gelato recipes, 11 sorbetti, and 3 granite. I've had the book for over a year and have made all of the Granite recipes. But I haven't had the nerve to try any Gelato or Sorbetti yet.

By the way, are any of you familiar with any of the books she lists in her bibliography?
"Scienza e technologia del gelato artigianale." by Luca Caviezel (1996)
"Il Gelato" by Fernanda Gosetti (1995)
"Come fare i gelati in casa" by Laura and Margherita Landra (1997)
"Il gelato artigianale italiani" by G. Preti (1982)
Are any of you familiar with any of those book?

Deborah Horn
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Marketing Solutions for Health Care

Isn't gelato made daily, or every few days? I think it tastes better because it is really, really fresh, so the flavors are more pronounced and the texture is perfect. I have only had fresh ice cream a few times here in the U.S. and I remember always being blown away by how creamy and flavorful it was. A lot different than buying it in the supermarket.

In Venice a lot of restaurants have a freezer full of these mass-produced gelato things, I always wondered why people would order one when they can walk a couple of blocks and get the real thing.

Venice, like falling to the bottom of a turquoise fishbowl...

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Originally posted by Shannon:
In Venice a lot of restaurants have a freezer full of these mass-produced gelato things, I always wondered why people would order one when they can walk a couple of blocks and get the real thing.
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Yes, Shannon, but I have to admit it was kind of fun to stop at a bar close to Umbertide on our very first trip to Italy and discover that I could buy from their freezer case a coconut gelato frozen right in the coconut shell. However, once was enough.

Deborah Horn
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Marketing Solutions for Health Care

Deborah, I have ordered those gelato concoctions too - even the coconut shell thing! Once I was with someone who ordered a vanilla parfait looking thing - but then he poured an espresso on top of it and then it was so good. Maybe that is the trick, pour espresso on top.

Venice, like falling to the bottom of a turquoise fishbowl...

Il Labortorio on Orchard Street in New York City's lower East Side has gelato that would compete very favorably with the best gelato to be found in Italy. Rich, creamy, highly flavored and deeply colored.

Peter

The April issue of Food & Wine magazine had a little blurb about Jon Snyder, founder of Il Laboratorio del Gelato at 95 Orchard St. He started Ciao Bella gelato at age 19, sold it in 1989, started ILdG last year.
From the article:

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His ultra-creamy gelatos - in flavors like a lusciously fruity Concord grape with bits of grape skin - are more fine-tuned than Ciao Bella's, says Snder: "This comes after 20 years of maturing."

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You can try for yourself - Laboratorio ships nationwide. $6/pint (unclear if this is total cost or just for shipping!) 212/343-9922.

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined." ~Henry David Thoreau

A local baker here in NJ, who is originally from near Bologna, has just started making gelato himself. He says he imported the equipment from Italy, and has about 8 flavors of gelato and sorbetto every day. Everything else in his shop is great, but I don't yet know about the gelato. What would I do if I could feed my gelato addiction right here in Montclair?

A few mixed replies and comments.
Diva: I would also make a distinction between packaged gelato and handmade gelato, proably packaged gelato 8even the good brands like Haagen-Dasz 8-9~) are more like american ice cream, according to composition. Packaged gelato needs to have more fats just to kep softer, while handmade gelato is hept at just 0°C: it lasts less, but it needs less fats.
Also, there is handmade gelato and handmade gelato. I am currently addicted to a gelateria next to my office called Cardelli. It sells the very best gelato of Milano (or at least the best that I have tasted yet), all made with true fruit and other natural ingredients and it really tastes superb, but it also costs twice as much! The smallest cup costs 2,30 euro, but it really tastes much better than the average. A few days ago I bought a gelato in another place, and it was horrible, tasting like chemicals: the owner had used artifical flavors to make it, and it was really spoiled! It really tsted like a medicine.
Shannon: some people actually prefer the packaged stuff. My grandma, for instance: she says that they are more "hygienical" 8-(((
Uh, and the sorbetti/gelato thing. gelato, also called gelato mantecato, is made with diary and it can be either fruit or creams. Sorbetto is made only with water, fruit and some sugar. It is slightly rougher, not as soft, and it is harder to make, that's why some gelateria do not make it. Also, if it's made with added flavors it can get real bad tasting, so gelaterie who use these artificial flavors never make sorbetto. They just make a universal basic mixture and add the premixed flavors to it, that's all. Only true "artigiani" make sorbetti.

Alice Twain
--
– Che peccato, signora: lei ha partorito e suo marito non c’era.
– Oh, se è per quello non c’era nemmeno quando sono rimasta incinta!
          Leo Ortolani, Rat Man, “Il primogenito”

I keep plugging Il Gelatone on 3rd avenue between 28th and 29th street (on the east side of the street). It's 2 guys from Florence that make the gelato and they make it fresh daily. As a matter of fact, if you get there too early (they open at 3:00 pm), they may not have the fruit flavors completed.

hagen daz is American ice cream....funny they gave it a name to make it sound like it wasn't american..

I know they use unnatural fats ( not from cream) to mke it creamy.. I always read lables!

Cooking in Florence
www.divinacucina.com

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Originally posted by Diva:
I know they use unnatural fats ( not from cream) to mke it creamy.. I always read lables!

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So do I, but at least they do not ise powdered milk and eggs, as many ice cream producers do here in Italy. I can stand a few hydrogenated fats as long as there is nothing worse. And I must say that it is a terrible temptation, in summer... Mid afternoon, when you get that little "voglia di qualcosa di buono". When my beloved Cardelli gelateria is not open (on Wednesday and for a couple of weeks in August)... Well, I can't help myself.

Alice Twain
--
– Che peccato, signora: lei ha partorito e suo marito non c’era.
– Oh, se è per quello non c’era nemmeno quando sono rimasta incinta!
          Leo Ortolani, Rat Man, “Il primogenito”