Milk Chocolate Gelato & Chocolate

Creamy milk chocolate gelato & chocolate ice cream

Milk Chocolate Gelato & Chocolate

Date Tried - January 4th & 5th, 2023

Location - Home, on the dampest day of the year

Format - Pint(s)

Milkshake Them? - Yes

Buy Again?

• Gelato, Yes

• Non-Gelato, No

  

  “Enjoy a taste of Italy with a pint of our delicious chocolate gelato. Delightfully creamy, delectably sweet… this chocolate gelato will have you speaking Italian. *not really ”

  

  “It’s not just chocolate… it’s Stewart’s CHOCOLATE! Chocolatey goodness with undertones of chocolate and a chocolatey finish.”

Let’s clear the air.

Two weeks in a row now, I have published a newsletter with two flavors lumped together into one review. Would it be unbefitting for you, the Reader, to begin asking yourself, “Is our captain getting weary of his journey? Is he trying to rush toward the shore prematurely!?”

I assure you, it’s not true! When I tried Death By Chocolate and Peppermint Stick, I didn’t know that I would be trying them together. I felt responsible to capture that broken precedent in the ‘I Scream, You Scream’ logs. The circumstances surrounding Milk Chocolate Gelato and Chocolate are slightly different, but still unparalleled.

January 4th was the dampest day of the year—a cold, numbing sort of damp that latches to your bone marrow and refuses to let go. Sure, it was only four days into the year, but I’d wager a bet that my subjective and immeasurable claim about this particular Wednesday—that it was, in fact, the dampest day—will remain true for the remainder of the calendar year.

As a rainy winter pick-me-up, Lisa and I decided to have a meal at the Baxter Mountain Tavern. And, on the way home, I jolted through the rain to pick up a new pint at the Keene Stewart’s. I was in the mood to shake things up a bit flavor-wise and quickly realized that I hadn’t tried their gelato yet. There are only three options: Milk Chocolate, Salty Caramel & Pistachio. In all honesty, I am most excited about Pistachio (wouldn’t you be?) but decided to wade into these waters slowly with the less exotic Milk Chocolate.

Let’s explore the institution of gelato a bit here; it’s a funny term that, in Italian, is universally used to refer to all ice cream. However, outside of Italy, we have come to equate “gelato” to a specific sub-genre of artisanal Italian ice cream with lower levels of butterfat and air, resulting in higher levels of density and richness. Delizioso!

Cosimo Ruggeri is one of the earliest figures associated with the delicacy. In the late 16th Century, he served as an advisor to Catherine de Medici—the Queen Regent of France—who put much stake in his alleged astrological fortune telling skills. As part of a royal competition, he served fior di latte, a milk cream dish that can be considered a precursor to modern gelato. In 1598, Cosimo—who had ramped up the intensity of his occult/witchcraft practices—was prosecuted for possessing a sorcerer’s doll which he intended to use to assassinate Henry IV.

I’m not sure what relevance that nugget has here, but it felt wrong not to share it with you.

The man who truly invented modern gelato is Procopio Cutò, a Sicilian chef that opened Paris’ Café Procope in 1686. This business is still operational today and, if you dine there, you would be joining the historical ranks of Napoleon Bonaparte & Marie Antoinette.

But, dear Reader, let us return to the present day…

On the night of January 4th, Lisa and I tried Milk Chocolate Gelato. The moment I placed it in my mouth, I knew that my assessment would be incomplete without knowing how it stacked up against Chocolate, it’s non-gelato cousin. Twenty four hours later, the pints were side by side on the kitchen counter and, as I was about to crack in, the ever-vigilant Lisa cried aloud, “It should be a blind taste test!” [It should be known that Lisa has a small history with blind taste tests, as she once orchestrated one to see if we could distinguish the difference between Sanpellegrino Aranciata Rossa and Mountain Dew Code Red. Well, we could.]

Before I reveal the results of the blind test, I’d like to discuss the ingredients in each. Milk Chocolate Gelato is simpler in its composition. It only has two ingredients not found in the standard Chocolate: “natural flavor” & silicon dioxide [anticaking agent]. However, Chocolate has a whole mess of ingredients not found in its gelato counterpart: corn syrup, whey protein concentrate, mono and diglycerides, cellulose gel, cellulose gum, polysorbate 80, calcium sulfate & dipotassium phosphate.

Despite what the photos above seem to indicate, in real life, they are identical in color. Once scooped side by side into a bowl, there would be no reasonable way for the consumer to differentiate based on appearance alone.

As for the taste test…I failed by incorrectly identifying the gelato. And furthermore, once I knew which was which, I still could not tell them apart. Lisa thought the non-gelato had more of a “bite”, an intangible something that lingers with you after you’ve swallowed.

Maybe that’s the cellulose gel.

Thesis: If two flavors—one with the esteemed gelato brand and the other a mere mortal ice cream—appear and taste identical to each other, then I will ALWAYS choose the one with less ingredients, especially when most of those extra ingredients sound like they should be wielded carefully in a laboratory with rubber gloves.

But, let it also be stated…both these flavors are luscious. The nation knows it too, having awarded the non-gelato version of Chocolate the 1st Place prize in the Regular Chocolate Ice Cream Class at the 2021 World Dairy Expo.

As a continuation of the unexpected theme running though much of ‘I Scream, You Scream’, I am pleasantly shocked by my evolved tastes when it comes to chocolate ice cream. I could never have predicted that the tides would turn in this fashion.

But perhaps Cosimo Ruggeri could have.