How Italians sold ice cream to the masses in Vienna

Residents of the Austrian capital have queued for more than 130 years to sample the Italian ice cream of the Molin-Pradel family, one of Vienna's oldest gelato dynasties. "He helped democratise ice cream, which before was reserved for the wealthy," Silvio Molin-Pradel says of his great-great-grandfather Arcangelo, who began selling it out of pushcarts in Vienna in 1886. More than a century later, ice cream consumption among Austrians is higher than in neighbouring Italy. And it was entrepreneurs like Arcangelo Molin-Pradel, born into poverty in northern Italy's Dolomite Alps, who were among the first to benefit from the sweet tooth of the Viennese. The high cost of sugar, milk and refrigeration – years before electric freezing was invented – meant ice cream was long reserved for aristocrats. But ingenious Italians like the Molin-Pradels changed that, producing ice cream based on water and fruit extract. Ice cream migration  Originally from Zoldo, six hours from Vienna by car these days, the Molin-Pradels, like other families, were so poor that migrating for seasonal work was part of life – whether to work as seafarers, lumberjacks or ice cream makers. Vienna became one of the...