The ice creams They are the most consumed products during the summer. They are refreshing, sweet, and in some cases even addictive. His story is linked to one of the most fascinating episodes in world history:Marco Polo's trips to the Middle East. And its entry and industrialization in Peru, has to do with the strength of a family of Italian immigrants who arrived on our shores at the end of the 19th century. Today, the variety of flavors and combinations have generated an entire culture of ice cream and real delicacies can be produced on the basis of this age-old flavored frozen dessert idea. In this note we remember the history of this delicacy:
When Italian navigator Marco Polo returned to Europe from the East in the 13th century, he brought with him many Asian dessert recipes, including the ice cream . These recipes were received with some enthusiasm in the Italian courts of the Middle Ages.
A cold, pudding-like dish made from rosewater and vermicelli was served to royalty in Persia in 400 BC. The Persians had, at this time, a technique to cool food and ice collected during the winter or collected from the high mountains during the summer. The collected ice was mixed with saffron and fruit, a preparation that gave the dessert a very pleasant flavor.
The Tang emperor of China who reigned between the years 618-697 before the Christian Era, knew a procedure to make a pleasant mixture of ice with milk. This preservation recipe passed from China to India, to ancient Persia and later to Greece and Rome. Charles Pannati, a scientific writer and editor of the famous publication Newsweek, in his book The extraordinary origin of everyday things goes even further and says that, in China, ice cream is up to four thousand years old.
At this time, a shortbread dough was prepared based on very cooked rice, spices and milk, which, when it was finished mixing, was placed in the snow to freeze. The same writer relates that the Chinese put the pulp of the fruit and its juices to freeze, the result was a dessert very similar to ice cream . These ice creams they were sold in the 13th century BC by street vendors in the streets of Beijing.
It is also known that both the great conqueror Alexander the Great, of Macedonian origin, who reigned from 336 BC until his death, and the Roman Emperor Nero, governor of Rome between the 54 and 68 AD, they also mastered a technique for cooling fruit juices and wines with snow brought from the mountains. From Rome there is written evidence from multiple historians of the time, such as Pliny the Elder, Marziale, Seneca and Giovenale, all of whom say that ice was brought from the Apennines or the Maiella or Gran Sasso mountains in order to prepare juices. cold fruit, desserts and ice creams .
The arrival of the Saracens in Sicily and Spain in the 8th century introduced new products that were not well known in Europe until then. More precisely, products such as coffee, pistachios and cane sugar brought from Persia became known. With greater incidence, the cold dessert began to be prepared in the Italian region of Sicily, where the Saracens themselves taught the custom of consuming ice and snow combined with fruit juices sweetened with honey.
It is believed that the word sorbet, used in the Spanish language, has its origin in the Arabic term Sharbet, a term that the Saracens used to describe the mixture of ice or snow with honey, fruits and spices. However, it was not until 1500 of the Christian Era that the first ice cream was made. as you know it today. Cosimo I de' Medici, a nobleman from the Duchy of Tuscany, commissioned Bernardo Buontalenti, a chemist of the time, to take charge of the banquet that was going to be prepared to surprise the King of Spain.
Buontalenti, prepared some frozen butter creams sweetened with a product relatively unknown at the time, sugar. The success of the dessert was such that it continued to be prepared much more frequently for the different European courts. Then, thanks to Catherine de Medici, from the second half of 1500, the consumption of ice cream spread. as an exquisite, natural and healthy custom.
In London, in 1850, an Italian immigrant sets up the first ice cream factory/laboratory mass. For the first time in the modern world, ice cream is being sold in carts, a custom that was imitated in many European capitals, especially by the Italians. Then the consumption of this dessert in a wafer was introduced, this custom reached the United States and from there to all of America.
In Peru, ice creams They are old tradition. There is a record that in 1791, in establishments called Cafés, ice creams were served and cold drinks of all kinds according to a famous publication of the time called El Mercurio Peruano. Snow or ice was brought from the Andes Mountains to make ice cream . This elaboration process was very expensive because the ice had to be brought in blankets with salt.
The great Peruvian writer Ricardo Palma tells in his Peruvian Traditions that the itinerant ice cream makers are, with very rare exceptions, all children of the town of Corongo, but the coronguinos as ice cream makers have a higher level much inferior to the Huancayo Indians.
In Peru, the manufacturer D'onofrio, from a family of Italian immigrants, is one of the first to introduce the sale of ice cream en masse for the Peruvian market. This family arrived in Peru in 1897 bringing from Richmond, capital of the State of Virginia, United States a wooden cart pushed by human force for the distribution of ice cream . This wooden car was the starting point of a large ice cream industry that continues to this day.