Is Italian Ice Actually Italian?

Italy is responsible for so many incredible desserts, especially frozen ones. They've given the world gelato, sorbetto, semifreddo, and granita, which have each found their way to the United States, albeit with a few tweaks here and there. Store-bought gelato doesn't compare to the real deal and American sorbet can't seem to capture Italy's creamy counterpart. Granita, essentially Italy's shaved ice, is the inspiration for the Italian ice we know and love in the States, but nothing quite compares. While allegedly created by a Sicilian, Italian ice was technically born in America.

Granita is an ancient Sicilian treat originally made with shaved snow, fruit syrups and citrus. As expected with any recipe dating back to the 9th century, it seemed to alter with every generation like a game of telephone. Eventually, they swapped the snow for sweetened water and it became a balanced, icy treat, sort of like an elevated cross between sorbet and a snow cone. Granita is refreshing enough to be enjoyed morning, noon, and night; it is often enjoyed in Sicily for breakfast with brioche. Once ingrained in Sicilian culture, the simple recipe hardly differed, that is, until immigrants brought it abroad.

Like so many incredible, long-standing Italian-American recipes, Italian Ice came from New Jersey. Caterina DiCosmo, a Sicilian immigrant, was craving granita so she did her best and created Italian ice. Rather than handling the slivers of ice by hand, she churned the frozen mixture with an ice cream maker and served it at her and her husband's small Peterstown market. The base of the treat is ice, but it's levels above a snow cone. This Americanized version of granita has more of an ice cream consistency, still dairy-free and refreshingly icy, but with fewer (if any) chunks of ice. It's slightly blended to give it structure, but not so much that it loses its texture.

The DiCosmos often get credit for creating Italian ice back in 1915, but some may argue that Philadelphia is the true home of Italian ice, or water ice as Philly calls it. Sam Rosati, also known as "the king of water ice," began producing the icy treat out of his basement as early as 1912 and it became a Philly classic as soon as Rosati took his lemon ices to the Jersey shore in horse-drawn wagons. Some may say the two are interchangeable and its simply cultural differences, but water ice tends to be a tad chunkier, slightly closer to a shaved ice.