Our Tiramisu gelato is made with pasteurized egg yolks, fresh Mascarpone cheese and freshly brewed espresso. Really one of my favorite flavors!
I often hear the story that in gelato you must use eggs.
This is probably because I am now living in the US and everybody here is used to ice cream and custard like frozen desserts that do use eggs in abundance.
Keep in mind that when we talk about eggs in frozen dessert we are talking about egg yolks only, and pasteurized ones. Old school gelatieri in Italy still use egg whites in sorbetti to help with the volume and overall structure of the product. This is something I do not recommend, because sorbetti don’t need them and also in this case they will not be vegan anymore. Not to mention the possible contamination that you can bring.
So here is the first news: you don’t need eggs to make amazing gelato! As a matter of fact I am actually reducing my recipes that contain eggs simply because we don’t need them necessarily and also because many people are allergic or just don’t want to eat them.
Yes, if you are in Italy there are several flavors that require egg yolks like Tiramisu, Mascarpone, Malaga, Crema, Zabaione…and so on, but not here in the US.
Back in the days (beginning of 1900) eggs were one of the key ingredients in gelato because they were cheap and available everywhere (my grandparents used to have chickens in their backyard for example), but especially because they are natural emulsifiers and help with air incorporation. Back then there were no stabilizers or emulsifiers so to get a better, creamier gelato egg yolks were very important. They also did not have milk powder back then so they needed eggs to help with air incorporation and overall protein values.
Old recipes that still would hold up well only had 4 ingredients: Milk, cream, eggs & sugar. Obviously, a lot of egg yolks :)
Nowadays, as I mentioned, I am minimizing the use of egg yolks to only recipes that must have them otherwise I steer clear. I also don’t prepare a large “egg base” but only an egg paste or simply use pasteurized egg yolks directly in my recipes as needed.
If you decide to use non pasteurized egg yolks, you can obviously pasteurize them in your own pasteurizer or all in one machine, just make sure you don’t heat to more than 65C and follow the specific program. You don’t want to heat egg yolks at higher temperature to avoid the coagulation of the proteins (think scrambled eggs ;) ).
But why would we use egg yolks anyway?
Egg yolks, beside adding the flavor and color to your recipe, are also a natural emulsifier (they help binding water & fat molecules to obtain a smooth and creamy texture) and help incorporate more air in your gelato. These reasons make them ideal in chocolate, nuts and overall heavy solid & fatty flavors.
Hopefully this was helpful & valuable!
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A presto amici!
Vincenzo