With a forecast of a hot and dry El Niño summer what better than a refreshing gelato to cool us down? Lower in fat less in sugar, churned at a lower rate and therefore lighter and more flavoursome than its younger cousin the ice-cream, gelato is comforting food stimulates happiness hormones it’s irresistible addictive: quelle passion!
The name comes from the Latin gelatus, meaning frozen.
From very ancient times ice was sourced from mountain peaks for the rich and famous like the Pharaohs and Alexander the Great, crushed and honey/fruits/flavours added to make refreshing
sorbet-like desserts.
They say a very similar version of the modern gelato was made by a Florentine stage designer at the court of Caterina de’ Medici while entertaining Spanish dignitaries (or was it concocted by an alchemist at her court in France?)
In Australia gelato was available at beach side shops from last century and in 1968 an edition of the Women’s Weekly published a recipe for making a luscious gelato dessert at home.
In the era of multiculturalism it became as well known as cappuccino and pizza and is now available in supermarkets and artisan shops all over the country.
The flavours are unlimited: from the classic chocolate, strawberry, lemon…to the modern tiramisu, yogurt, mango….to the herbs based rosemary and basil…
For a chance to receive a Food Champions Award please share with us: What is your favourite gelato, What flavour/flavours do you prefer? Do you purchase a container at the supermarket or a cone at your artisan gelato shop?
Big thank you to all participants of the October challenge, you’ve made it a great one!
If I liked gelato I would probably go for mango and/or berry flavours.
If I liked bought gelato I would have to get it from a supermarket, there being no artisan gelato shops in my vicinity.
There’s no accounting for taste. I like many Italian foods, and their style of coffee-making, but I prefer ice cream to gelato any day. Fortunately, my SO and I agree on that, both prefer plain vanilla ice cream over the extra-flavoured types, and even agree on the brand! And vanilla ice cream goes with and enhances so many things: mango / berries / Christmas Pudding / sticky date pudding / whatever.
When it’s a warm night and I’m fishing the Breakwater at Williamstown the Food truck arrives .I always buy a Gelato cone from him . Wild berry is the flavour I like .
Gelato cannot be called ice cream because it has a lower fat content.
This is defined by the Food Standard Code.
Gelato is made with milk. Ice cream with cream.
There are other differences too, and also those who don’t like gelato would object to be buying it under another name?
By that logic cakes, biscuits, pancakes, pikelets, puddings, brownies and slices are all the same stuff with minor regional variants in amounts of ingredients.
In either frozen desserts or those cooked with flour (just to take two classes) the various dishes are not interchangeable and in some cases it is hard to see the similarity to others that are made from the same set of ingredients unless you know how they were made.
The multitude of combinations in choice of ingredients (even from a limited list) the proportions and the technique for combining them result is a vast number of possible foods that are not the same and rightly have different names.
The same applies to the fermented juice of vitus vinifera, basically all the same ingredients with minor variations. No need to have all those names and styles, just call them all wine.
If your taste buds struggle to differentiate Australian (Yarra Valley, McLaren Vale, Clare Valley, Barossa, Coonawarra, Rutherglen, Margaret River, …), American (Napa, Sonoma, Washington State, …) and French cabernet (Bordeaux, …), and others such as Argentine and Eastern Europe, I can understand your belief gelato and ice cream are one and the same except for minor regional differences because they are all made with cabernet grapes but with some minor regional, terroir, and species variants.
If you also struggle to differentiate the taste and sensory qualities of a Cadbury Dairy Milk from a Hershey Bar I can understand your belief gelato and ice cream are one and the same except for minor regional differences because they are both milk chocolate.
Hint: know when to fold.
Back to the topic of Gelato, I personally prefer ice cream and unlike those with less critical taste buds I can discern the obvious differences.
So the challenge is about low fat icecream? Something that cannot be called icecream due to it not meeting required definitions.
But even real milk has fat in it. Real milk, not concoctions using the word ‘milk’ in the name.
To be called Ice cream there has to be 10% milk fat. One of the problems gelato manufacturers (Everest, Taranto in Melbourne) faced when they started their business was that inspectors would disallow naming gelato ‘ice-cream’. It means that it’s against the law to call gelato ice cream.
Now pumping too much air into supposedly Italian icecream ( yeah, gelato) would make it like, shock, horror, just like American icecream. Can’t have that.
A lot of palaver here about the differences between ice cream and gelato. I love both, but I find if I eat real ice cream, I can smell the butter fat coming off my skin! Gelato doesn’t have that effect. With gelato, I love the mocha or chocolate or coffee or hazelnut universes. I wouldn’t turn up my nose at fruit flavours, but I like to indulge!
Yes. Gelato doesn’t have a high fat content, and can be very flavoursome.
The challenge is simply: what flavour/flavours of gelato you like?
The question presupposes that we sometimes buy gelato and that we like it.
And vanilla ice cream goes with and enhances so many things: mango / berries / Christmas Pudding / sticky date pudding / whatever. 
