Italian Ice Creams, Sorbets, and Semifreddi

The Italian Ice Cream Taste. To all but the most recent generations of Italians, the coming of the warm season was associated with the welcome call of the ice cream man’s bell, and with the delicacies he dispensed from his pushcart: clear tasting, fluffy, and light, mixed in a hand-turned freezer only hours before. Today people push buttons instead of turning cranks, and pushcarts have been replaced by glossy shops of granite and chrome. But the flavor of good Italian ice cream still springs from the same source—fresh, unlabored handling of ingredients that are natural, unprocessed, and not overrich.