Sorbet, forerunner of artisanal ice cream, an Italian product with a history that has its roots in ancient Sicily. It is Pliny the Elder in his “Historia naturalis” who wrote about the “dulcis nix“, a frozen delicacy made with snow from Etna mixed with honey and fruit juices. The same treatise mentions a lively ice trade also coming from Mount Terminillo and Vesuvius and the spreading alongside the roads of Thermopolia, the gelato carts of the time. An artisanal dish lost track of in the Middle Ages in Europe, but not in the joyous East.
The crusaders brought sorbet back to European land, which in Trinacria retained the Arabic recipe (from “scherbet” the name “sorbetto”), as the basis for the growing fame of gelato and the delicious Italian sorbet.
After the success in southern Italy, it was Buontalenti (who offered the Florentine cream to Spanish guests of the Duke of Tuscany) and Ruggeri, who presented it again in a contest as “cold dessert”, who associated artisanal sorbet with gelato in the tradition of Italian pastry, later exploding worldwide thanks to the work of Sicilian master gelato makers.
