The grandfathers of gelato

( Financial Times – 2009 – Mary Taylor Simeti )

Sicilians adore ice-cream, so much so that in the summertime they even eat it for breakfast. A brioscia filled with a large scoop of coffee or hazelnut ice-cream and topped with a swirl of whipped cream will set a Sicilian up for the whole morning; a lighter version would be a glass of granita – coffee or lemon or, in eastern Sicily, almond – with the brioscia on the side.

The brioscia is, in name as well as in substance, the Sicilian reinterpretation of a French brioche, said to have been the work of the Swiss pastry chef Caviezel, who set up shop in Catania in the early 19th century. Very similar in appearance to an American hamburger bun, a good brioscia should be soft, slightly sweet and capable of absorbing the melt without becoming gooey. The proper technique for eating one filled with rapidly melting ice-cream – a skilful sequencing of squeeze, lick and bite – is something that Sicilian children acquire very young. Foreigners initially tend to make a mess of it.

The foreigners who in the 18th and 19th centuries extended their Grand Tour as far as Sicily marvelled at the passion with which the natives procured their supply of snow and consumed the ices produced thereby. So great is this passion – and, it might be added, so delicious is Sicilian gelato – that the Sicilians are convinced that they themselves are the inventors of ice-cream, the guardians of a culinary secret brought here, according to current myth, by the 8th-century Arab invaders, who used the snows to cool their sarbat, fruit syrups diluted with water.

I confess that they convinced me as well. When I first started to write about the history of Sicilian food, I blithely stated that “the passage from sarbat and water, chilled in a container of ice, to granita was only a question of time”. Jeffrey Steingarten, the American food writer, took me sternly to task for this, and sent me abashed to Elizabeth David’s Harvest of the Cold Months to read up on the endothermic effect. One can chill a liquid by adding ice or snow but one can only freeze it thanks to the endothermic effect, that is, by adding salt to the surrounding ice, thus bringing down the temperature well below 0°C. The 8th-century Arabs knew this principle, indeed they imported it from the Chinese, but for centuries it remained in the domain of science and medicine, at most a parlour trick. Only in the 16th century did it migrate to the kitchen.

The first written description of this most welcome innovation is in a poem called “Il candiero”, written by a 17th-century gentleman of Florence, a sort of recipe in verse which ends by saying that this ice-cream, flavoured with jasmine and lemon, was first made to quench the thirst of the “Signor di Carbonagno” (sic).

What’s more, according to the poet, the candiero celebrated in the poem was made by “il Siciliano”. So the Sicilians are not all wrong. Too bad, says Elizabeth David, that we don’t know more about“ … who that Sicilian candiero-maker was and who his master the Signor Carbognano…”. But we do, and we might. In all likelihood the master was Giulio Cesare Colonna di Sciarra, Prince of Carbognano (1636-1681), whose domestic accounts, preserved as part of the Barberini Archives in the Vatican library, might well reveal to a qualified researcher the secret of “il Siciliano”.

Whether or not they invented ice-cream, the Sicilians certainly do know how to make a good one. Artisanal ice-cream is made in bars, cafés and gelaterias across the island and its quality is generally very high, although much depends on the quality of the prepared pastes and bases that are used. Then there are the upscale ice-cream makers who prepare most ingredients themselves and employ local products – Sicily’s famed almonds and pistachios and its delicious fruits – to flavour their products. In eastern Sicily the acknowledged master is Corrado Assenza of the Caffè Sicilia in Noto, who has long since acquired international fame thanks to his pastries, jams, and chocolates, and is now branching out from the traditional sweet flavours of dessert ice-cream to the new and fashionable savoury ices designed to accompany fish or meat dishes, or as a palate cleanser between courses.

Although there is plenty of good gelato available in Palermo, I chose to go to Cerda, a small town about 70km east of the city, where Antonio Cappadonia has acquired a reputation of being the best gelatiere in western Sicily. He acquired his trade by chance: he was studying law when his father decided to invest his life savings in a bar in the main square, an activity that promised his son a more certain future than a law degree. A self-taught artisan, he met the great names of Italian gelato at trade fairs, took some courses and developed such a passion that he eventually stopped selling everything but gelato.

A singularly pleasant and modest young man, Cappadonia was extremely patient with my questions, and explained the difference between French ice-cream (lots of cream), Italian (heavy on the milk and eggs) and Sicilian (milk and a thickener/emulsifier). In centuries past Sicilians also used inexpensive wheat starch to thicken their gelato but for Cappadonia, as well as for Corrado Assenza, the absolute best emulsifier giving the absolutely creamiest product is flour milled from the carob bean. A totally natural product, it has a remarkable capacity for absorbing water, thus preventing the formation of ice crystals and ensuring a very smooth texture.

The carob tree grows throughout the Mediterranean, and is making a comeback in Sicily, especially in the province of Ragusa, where Assenza operates. The sweetening power of the bean pod and the thickening power of the seed have been known since antiquity (the Egyptians apparently ate the pods and used a paste made from the seeds to glue the wrappings on their mummies).

Interviewing Cappadonia was a delightful experience. In between questions I got to taste his hazelnut ice-cream (made from the best hazelnuts, grown in the Langhe of Piedmont), his lemon sorbet (locally grown lemons), cantaloupe sorbet (melons from Licata), as well as ice-creams made from pistachios (Bronte Reds from the slopes of Etna) and almonds (from the Val di Noto).

He makes a point of knowing where and by whom each ingredient is produced, and is particularly proud of an ice-cream of his own invention, made from manna, the sap harvested from ash trees growing in the nearby Madonie mountains.

It was not the right season to taste the creation for which he is most famous, an artichoke sorbet invented in homage to the principal crop of the farms around Cerda, which he makes of centrifuged artichokes, sugar and lemon juice. He calls it a gelato da meditazione, something to eat sitting down, with thoughtfulness. I can’t wait to meditate upon it next spring.