APP AND SOFTWARE FOR GELATO MAKERS
19/02/2025
Stefano Tarquinio, senior lecturer at Carpigiani Gelato University, talked about his experience with software and apps to balance gelato recipes. He began by explaining that he initially got into gelato because it’s the perfect union of his two passions: food and numbers. Gelato perfectly combines an emotional part linked to memory, palate, taste, and sensations and a more technical, numerical and scientific part. "As much as the numbers may seem totally detached from flavor, it’s actually thanks to mathematics that you can take your product to the next level." Understanding, calculating, and maintaining the right proportion between the sugar, fat, protein, and flavor components is the key to achieving a product "capable of awakening those emotions – that ‘magic’ – that people seek when eating gelato. The ingredients can’t be mixed at random, but must be well balanced in order to achieve an ideal equilibrium." Therefore, to balance a gelato flavor it’s important to have tools that simplify and help analyze a recipe so that the result can be predicted once it’s made into gelato.
Stefano went on to say that he can predict the outcome of the products he creates if he has the ability to analyze a recipe, studying what he calls "its numerical code": a set of "percentages and indices that help to understand texture and creaminess. These numbers can give me an idea of the structure that the gelato will have, as well as its taste and creaminess. Once you confirm that you’ve obtained the product desired, it’s important to keep track of this recipe, to compare it and possibly keep it as a reference and modify others."
For this reason writing a recipe on a piece of paper isn’t enough, especially when there’s technology that can help with the most complex and tedious aspects. Using an app or software speeds up calculation time, giving you the ability to create new recipes in an easy way, but always aiming at the quality of the result. Furthermore, digitizing your recipes allows you to access your database in real time, modifying and rapidly recalculating them for different quantities, adapting them to any new production needs.
The cloud and algorithms are valuable tools for gelato artisans and all those professionals who want to have a precise, detailed control over the results of their work. "As an instructor, I travel often and see many different realities. Having the ability to use software that can be accessed remotely to enter new recipes and compare those already saved, analyzing their parameters, ingredients and characteristics, has increasingly become a real need. This is why we developed the Carpigiani Gelato University balancing app."
Stefano confirms that since he started "analyzing the numbers" of his recipes, he has improved the quality of his products. Still, he emphasizes that "production experience is crucial. In addition to checking the numbers, it’s important to verify scientific principles and their application in production. This helps to understand the importance of certain steps and the use of certain ingredients in the product’s final performance." In addition to this, it also takes practice forecasting, analyzing, and "studying the results, so that over time you’ll be able to understand that this set of numbers corresponds to a taste, a consistency, a structure. If the artisan can adopt this perspective, their product will improve and their business will benefit, both organizationally and in terms of taste. "This is how you become a 'master of the mix' and fully understand the concept of making gelato with any ingredient." Stefano compares this approach to a game: "like with a game you’re passionate about, at first you participate but don't fully understand the rules, then as you play you learn, until you become a true champion."
Analysis and the correct interpretation of numbers, production experience combined with a knowledge of the ingredients, and a good palate are principles applicable not only to the field of gelato, but to all areas related to food. "I invite you to discover and apply the language of numbers to worlds other than gelato. I’m convinced that you’ll find it quite enlightening."
Comments (1)
This article confirms what every gelato artisan secretly knows: behind every perfectly silky scoop is a carefully calibrated alchemy of fats, sugars, and proteins, orchestrated not by chance but by cold, hard (or rather, delightfully soft) data. And if numbers hold the key to unlocking gelato perfection, then let?s face it?balancing apps like the one from Carpigiani Gelato University are the gelato maker?s Excalibur.
Gone are the days of scribbling cryptic notes on flour-dusted notepads, only to lose them behind the gelato machine. No more frantically recalculating a batch while your mise en place glares at you in judgment. The digital era has arrived, and with it, the power to predict, tweak, and refine recipes with the precision of a Michelin-starred wizard.
But let?s not forget Stefano?s most important lesson: numbers alone don?t make a gelato maestro. You still need hands-on experience, a deep understanding of ingredients, and?most crucially?a taste for adventure (and gelato). So, whether you?re a seasoned gelatiere or an ambitious rookie, embrace the numbers, master the mix, and keep chasing that perfect scoop.
Now, if you?ll excuse me, I suddenly feel the need to do some ?quality control? on my own gelato? purely for research purposes, of course.