The start of frozen desserts date back to 3000B.C when Asian cultures discovered that the consumption of crushed ice and flavourings are quite tasty. Perhaps not as good as our ice cream or Gelato in Fulham, but good enough to investigate the taste of ice products further. It was not until much later, in fact it was during the Italian Renaissance when the tradition of Italian gelato began. The Medici family in Florence held a contest in search of the best frozen dessert. One man named Ruggeri was a chicken farmer and cook, but upon hearing news of the competition he devoted his spare time to developing a tasty frozen dessert of sweet fruit juice and ice which is similar to what we know today as sorbet. It was quite the gelato as we know it today in Fulham but thing were definitely moving in the right direction. The talented farmer won the award and the news of his famous frozen desert spread around the world.
Caterina De Medici has much faith in Ruggeri and took him to France where she was going to get married to the future King of France. She believed that he was the only one who could rival the fine desserts of French chefs, and so she asked him to make his speciality at her wedding. Everyone of course loved the sorbet like dessert, but that was not the end of the Medici’s involvement in the invention of the frozen dessert that today in Fulham we call Gelato. It was in the late 1500s that the Medici family commissioned a famous artist Bernardo Buontalenti to prepare a beautiful feast for the visiting King of Spain. You guessed it, he created the creamy frozen dessert that we now call gelato.
At Ice & Slice we make our gelato daily in Fulham by combining premium ingredients like Yeo Valley organic milk and cream, Sicilian pistachio and Piedmont hazelnuts roasted to order and whole fruit. If you’re like the Medici family, crazy about gelato come into our Ice & Slice store in Fulham any time from Monday to Thursday and with every round or whole pizza get a 50% off on 750gr or 1000gr gelato take away tubs. That’s something the Medici’s would very much appreciate 500 years later.