The story behind Italy’s love of gelato
Culinary history is full of twists and turns, a place where myth can become fact. The story of Italian gelato is no different, offering a fine line between history and legend.
We know the earliest origins of gelato date back to the 11th century when Arab culture invented shrb, a sugar syrup used to make fruit sorbets. Often containing a mix of herbs, flowers, and spices, shrb became widespread in Sicily when the island was under Arab rule. At the time, more than 400 different kinds of flowers were incorporated into the local sorbets.
