ROME – An Italian reporter has revived the artisan ice-cream recipe of her ancestors who built a gelato empire in Britain after making their home in the UK almost two centuries ago.
Rachele Brancatisano, 35, is on a mission to trace her heritage: her great-great-grandfather Giovanni Marcantoni, from a humble peasant family from the village of Picinisco, south of Rome, succeeded, through sacrifice and hard work, in establishing a thriving ice-cream business in Newcastle.
Ms Brancatisano, who each summer embraces the ice-cream making art in Picinisco to detox from her stressful radio journalist life in Rome, says she has no clue where her long-lost family are in the UK now, but has always wanted to reconnect with them – if they’re still around.
Her ancestors arrived on British shores in the 1850s. “Giovanni Marcantoni, with his sons Lorenzo and Vincenzo, escaped this once brigand-infested valley, migrating to England where – following in the footsteps of many Italians – he set up a business as an ice-cream vendor at street corners,” she told i.
“Then Lorenzo returned to Picinisco and started teaching the family’s future generations how to make their special one-flavour gelato, dubbed here ‘the British cream’, all the way to my granny Berenice and aunt Lidia, who then taught me.”
Ms Brancatisano is proud to have reopened her nonna’s historic ice-cream parlour on Picinisco’s piazza.
The parlour, called La Crema di Berenice, serves just one cream flavour, sweetened with vanilla and made with fresh milk from the stables and rudimental machinery – although it’s not quite like in the old days when the ice was fetched up the mountain and the ice-cream was stirred solely by hand, or with “elbow grease”, as locals say.
Today, the slow cooking is still done on a wood-burning stove and Ms Brancatisano occasionally stirs the gelato herself in front of customers. The recipe is top-secret, and was passed to Ms Brancatisano by her aunt, Lidia Marcantoni, after her nonna died.
According to her 76-year-old aunt, Giovanni’s great-granddaughter, the emigré family settled in Newcastle, anglicising their family and business name to “Mark Toney“. The firm still exists and has several parlours in town but is apparently no longer run by the original family.
“My second cousin Antony Marcantoni was at the helm of the Mark Toney ice-cream brand in Newcastle up until last year when he died, then it passed into the hands of some other very distant relative in the UK, but now I don’t know if anyone from the family still runs it,” says Mrs Marcantoni, who has fond memories of visiting her British relatives in Newcastle and indulging in real Italian ice-cream.
i contacted the Mark Toney office in Newcastle for comment but there was no response.
For decades, the Marcantonis in Newcastle made money that they invested back in their native village, buying a huge mansion just outside the historic centre, adds Mrs Marcantoni. But they dropped the one-flavour original cream recipe, instead selling all sorts of Italian-style multi-flavoured cones with pistachio and almonds.
It survived only in Picinisco, where Ms Brancatisano’s nonna Berenice ran the ice-cream shop from 1946 to 1983 when she died. It was shut for decades until her nephew and Ms Brancatisano re-opened it.
For Ms Brancatisano, what makes the “crema” unique is the love and story behind it.
“It has a pleasant taste, it leaves your mouth fresh, clean, not greasy. Entire generations of children and pilgrims walking across this valley have snacked on a Berenice ice-cream cone, often topped with a black cherry.”
By making ice-cream she honours the memory of her nonna and the legacy of her ancestors. She grew up listening to tales of this sublime simple gelato that thrived in the UK and regrets that her grandmother died before seeing the revived ice-cream parlour.
“Each time I’m there serving cones I think to myself, ‘Nonna, this is for you.’”
