Grattachecca, the Roman Answer to Summer Heat, Rome, Italy (B)

Shaved ice, fruit juice and fresh or dry fruit chunks. This is the Roman way to quench thirst during the torrid August days.

This cold dessert can only be found in Italy’s capital, you won’t see it in Florence or Venice. Forget about it! So important and quintessentially Roman that a couple of years ago it was also included in a Rome-based university admission test with some of the students coming from other parts of the country complaining because they had never heard of such a thing!

According to the legend, crushed ice with sweet syrups was a dessert also for Ancient Romans who would import snow from the nearby mountains of Abruzzo (Gran Sasso and Maiella) to prepare this delicacy. During Renaissance, in the 16th century, Catherine de Medici had her Italian cook make grattachecca even at the Royal French court in Paris, France. Most probably it was invented at the end of the 19th century: “Checca” stands in Roman dialect for ice block while “gratta” means to scrape: scrape the ice block. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).