The history of Ice cream, from its invention and ancient origins, has always been disputed, we do know however, that one of the first ice cream’s looked more like a fruit sorbet and had a very strange taste, very different from that of today.
In Florence, the famous Crema Buonatalenti ice cream was a revolution in the 1500’s, because for the first time it contained ingredients that had never been used before; egg yolks, cream and fresh mik. From this moment the florentine ice cream became creamy with a delicate taste of which we know today.
Its creator, Bernardo Buontalenti, was employed by the Medici Grandukes, as an architect, amongst his many projects, was the Tribune of the Uffizi and the Buontalenti grottoes in the Boboli gardens, as a military engineer, painter, sculptor, designer and imaginative chef!
Buontalenti was asked by the Grandukes to organise festivities and banquets and on one such occasion for visiting spanish diplomats, he discovered how to conserve snow and from this created ice sculptors which in turn helped him to invent his dessert, the Buontalenti ice cream, that became the principle receipe for the makers of ice cream to follow.
Ice was a great luxury during the 16th Century it was used for the preparation and preservation of summer refreshments but also for creating ice statues for banquets, it was conserved, for the Medici family, in the Boboli gardens thanks to Buontalenti!
