A sweet everyone agrees on: granita

Delicious, cool and light: granita is a unique, inimitable treat that makes us famous around the world.
But have you ever wondered how it came about?
The origins of granita go back to Arab rule in Sicily. The Arabs brought us sherbet, an iced drink flavoured with fruit and roses, to which Sicilians added snow from Etna, the Peloritani Mountains and the Iblei Mountains. It was the job of the nivaroli to collect the snow that fell on the mountains in winter and keep it in snow pits until the summer heat arrived. The ice was then scraped (hence granita's original name: 'a rattata – “the scraping”) and used to make sorbets and ices.
At first, lemon was squeezed over it and a little honey added for flavour. Over time many new flavours were tried, and they have come down to us today (almond, coffee, strawberry, mulberry, pistachio, etc.).

In the 16th century a change was made to the way snow was stored. It was discovered that salt could lower the freezing point. This gave rise to the first pozzetto, a wooden vat holding a zinc pail that could be turned with a handle. The space between the wood and the pail was filled with the mixture of salt and snow, which froze the contents. Granita made this way gradually replaced the “rattata” over the centuries.

In the 20th century, in the modern formula of “Traditional Sicilian Granita”, snow was replaced by water and honey by sugar, while the manual pozzetto cooled with ice (or snow) and salt was replaced, thanks to refrigeration technology (the batch freezer), by the ice-cream machine, making it possible to produce that unmistakable creamy mixture known and celebrated around the world as “Sicilian Granita”.