DON P. english sa

The art of ice cream creations

The italian dream - Don P. Gelato e Caffé In 1782, the Italian master confectioner and purveyor for the court, Don Ponesti Mendicci, created ice cream creations in Rome for royal courts in Florence, Sienna, Venice, and Rome.

His son, Don Ponesti Mendicci, took over the ice cream factory in 1811. In 1922, Ernesto Ponesti, great grandson of the last Don P. Mendicci, opened the first major ice cream parlor in Sienna named „Don P. Gelato e Caffé”. In addition, Ponesti organized street vending with the first of the ice cream trucks. But when the socalled “ice cream war” erupted in 1934, during which the four Italian ice cream manufacturers made life difficult for each other, almost all ice cream trucks were destroyed. To survive during these difficult times, Ponesti developed a unique selection of ice cream creations based on the secret recipes of his predecessor,

Poster from Don P. (Germany, 1956)

Don Ponesti Mendicci, which exceeded his competitionʼs selection many times over. This allowed him to become the countryʼs largest ice cream maker. The recipes were stored at a secret location under lock and key. At the beginning of the 40s, Ponesti married the daughter of a powerful German industrialist. On March 17, 1942, he was doomed in Berlin by his passion for card games. He lost almost his entire fortune during a poker game and even gambled away his familyʼs secret recipe. In the 50s, Don Ponesti Mendicciʻs documents suddenly reappeared.

Along with the economic miracle and guest workers from Italy, typical Italian ice cream parlors appeared. The name “Don P. Gelato e Caffé” still represents traditional Italian ice cream production today.

Our products - creation und quality The creation Each ice cream creation is made under the same conditions, with the same decoration, and with the highest possible standards of quality by highly motivated, creative, and, last, but not least, excellent trained specialists.

The tradition Don Ponesti MendicciĘźs old secret Italian recipe is still the basic ingredient for the making of all of our ice cream creations even today.

The quality The use of the best ingredients of the highest possible quality to produce ice cream available on the market and the exclusive use of Carpigiani machine, which are rightfully the world market leader in the area of machine ice cream production guarantee the highest quality possible at all times.

The combination of creation, quality, and tradition guarantees the highest enjoyment possible at any time and a feast for your senses! The name Don P. Gelato e CaffĂŠ guarantees it.

Service and coporate identity Purely Italian Don P. Gelato e Caffé is understood to be a typical Italian product. That means enjoyment of life, pleasure, and culture on the highest level. All employees at Don P. Gelato e Caffé live according to this philosophy. Our guests arrive as strangers and leave as friends.

All outlets follow the same interior design specifications that were created with a lot of love for detail by well-known designers. These designs are carefully customized according to the applicable architectural conditions at the location.

High-tech communication makes work easier for employees and guarantees our guests fast and optimal service.

All of this, and much more, makes every visit at Don P. an experience that you will love!

All children love Don P. Because weʼre big on little ones.

The History of Ice Cream Marco Polo (1254–1324) is considered to be the most significant medieval traveler of Asia. Upon his return to Venice in the year 1295, he brought back a recipe to make frozen goods as a present from the Mongolian ruler, Kublai Khan. He reported that already about three thousand years before, the Chinese had made ice cream made from milk, water, and fruit, and offered the cool specialty at street shops. The Chinese public teacher Confucius (551 – 479 B.C.) was one of those who even had a freezer cellar to be able to store fruit juices mixed with snow.

The pleasure of ice cream was not unknown to the Greeks, either. The “Snow from Mount Olymp” was even considered to be a godly meal. However, refined with honey, fruit juices, and wine, it was only served to members of high society. Prominent Greeks indulged in the icy fun, including the young hero of the Antique, Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.). He was considered to be one of the greatest admirers of the cool treat. Before each battle, the commander served his officers, to the extent that ingredients were available close by, sweetened snow mixed

with wine, milk, fruit juice, or honey.

The Greek physician Hippocrates (about 460 to 370 B.C.) supposedly prescribed some type of ice cream to cure all sorts of illnesses but also to “vitalize the lifeblood and increase wellbeing” in men (!). How may the Hippocratic ice cream dish have tasted? Certainly not like bitter medicine!

In the antique Rome, the snow was refined with honey, cinnamon, rose water, violets, and then the whole dish was garnished with dates, figs, almonds, nuts, and dried fruit.

The ice cream was seasoned with tree resin. The Roman emperor, Nero, (37–68 A.D.) stored snow from the peaks of the Albanian Alps in wood covered ground holes.

This allowed him to enjoy the white beauty at any time. In case of need, he had glacier ice brought to him from the far away Alps to satisfy his hunger for ice cream. A century later, well-off Roman citizens set up private ice cellars. Back then, it was considered to be especially nobly to offer guests frozen goods.

Some inventions made the ice cream production significantly easier. In 1589, the Italian physicist Giovanni Battista Della Porta reported about a process to generate low temperatures with a mixture of saltpeter and snow. The Florentine Bernado Buontalenti, who lived at the same time, simply strewed salt onto small pieces of ice and thereby yielded low temperatures. How it works physically was not known until later: The salt reduces the freezing point of water, so that the ice must melt, and then get the required heat energy from the environment, and generate cold.

The development of the ice cream culture did not continue until a hundred years later. The opening of the ice cream parlor in 1672 in Paris, gave the broad public access to the culinary experience for the first time. By the way, the owner of the parlor, confectioner Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli, had permission from the King to offer ice cream specialties. Guests included Diderot, Rousseau, and Voltaire.

Napoleon Bonaparte was also often seen enjoying ice cream at the traditional Procope café.

Even exile in Elba did not take away the ice cream pleasure because an English admirer supplied him with an ice cream making machine.

The History of Ice Cream However, ice cream back then was quite solid, or too soft, because the additions to the ice mix werenʼt known yet. The process became more comfortable after Coltelli alias Couteaux had invented a sorbetière or freezer can in 1660.

It turned inside of a second, larger drum containing the raw ice (we already know this from Nero) with the salt addition. The ice cream, which accumulated on the interior wall of the smaller can, had to be scraped off with a spatula from time to time. This introduced air to the ice cream and it became looser and lighter.

Although scraping by hand was continued until the end of the 17th century the number of ice cream men or lemonade stands quickly increased. In 1685, there were 250 of them in Paris already that were combined into “des glaces de fruits et de fleurs”.

It would seem that the Germans had to wait another hundred years for the public ice cream pleasure. Beginning in 1799 in Hamburg, one could indulge in “refreshments of any kind, especially frozen” at the Alsterpavillon at Jungfernstieg from emigrant Vicomte Augustin Lancelot de Quatre Barbes.

Such ice cream making machines were further perfected later, when the handheld spatula was replaced with a mechanical mixer that moved against the rotation direction of the ice can.

Many households continued to turn the hand crank on Sundays far into the past century, added chunks of ice from time to time, and strew salt onto them. The anticipation of tasty ice cream grew. But beware if the ice can wasnʼt closed tightly and salt penetrated to the inside!

After the Parisian “Limonadiers”, who were Ludwig XIVʼs juice makers, also received the royal privilege to make frozen treats, the consumption of ice cream quickly expanded in Paris. The sun king himself loved to eat large portions of chocolate

and vanilla ice cream. During the seventeenth century, the enjoyment of ice cream in Germany was not as popular as it was in France. The French lieutenant Count Thoranc, who lived with the Goethe family, wanted to treat the children to a large portion of ice cream in 1759 as a thankyou for housing him. It seemed impossible to mother Goethe that “the stomach could handle actual ice”. She was the first wanting to prohibit her children from the enjoyment of ice cream. However, she was not able to ruin young Goetheʼs appetite for ice cream forever.

In later years, he especially loved raspberry ice cream as his favorite. Bismarck was also a known raspberry ice cream lover. The author Prince von Pückler-Muskau (1785–1871) was a special follower of the cool delectability.

The Fürst-Pückler-Rolle has to thank his passion for ice cream for its name today.

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