Gelato is an age-old delicacy that dates back thousands of years. One of the first historical documents which speaks of “gelato” comes from a Greek poet who lived in Athens around 500 BC, who told how much the Greeks loved making refreshing drinks with lemon, honey, pomegranate juice, and of course snow or ice. With the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of Middle Ages, many delicacies that had been common to many different people were lost, but gelato survived and was improved in the Arab world, returning to Europe through Sicily, dominated for centuries by the Moors. The word “sorbet” comes from Arabic, either from the word sherbet (sweet snow). During the Renaissance, frozen desserts became very popular in Europe by way of France, although it is, once again, an Italian we must thank for it: Caterina de Medici, a lover of good food, brought along her troupe of chefs from Florence to Paris and it was they who began to offer sorbets at dinners. Sicily excels in the art of gelato-making: fruit and snow from Etna were the inexhaustible resources needed to perfect and invent new flavors. Sicilian gelato-makers exported their “sorbetto” first to Naples, then to Florence, Milan and Venice, and later on to France, Germany and England. The history of gelato, made not only with fruits but also with different creams and flavors, dates back to the 16th century. Where or who really invented gelato no one knows, but as most stories go, Bernardo Buontalenti, a native of Florence