Italy

Cooled dairy desserts have been known for millennia, but gelato is the child of refrigeration. Who invented it? Nobody and everybody. It’s a testament to the uncanny appeal of frozen cream that so many people made the effort to develop it further. Before refrigeration, of course, there was ice and snow: Emperors of the Zhou…

Gelato, it turns out, is a very different creature from ice cream. And there is a reason that the best gelato tastes so creamy yet still light, so balanced, so indescribably perfect. The secret—according to master gelatieri Andrea Soban of Valenza, Italy—involves patience, exceptional ingredients, and a fine-tuned knowledge of food chemistry.

Nono Colussi learned his trade in a bakery that has been in continuous operation since 1720. He is now a master of a culinary art that is nearly extinct: making mouth-wateringly light cake out of naturally yeasted dough.

In Venice, Italy, a city built for endless walking, a determined young woman named Daniela Ghezzo has mastered the rare art of simultaneously beautifying and comforting the human foot.

The late Butch Morris, a figure from the outer edges of jazz, reimagined conducting as a form of composition, coining his own word for the combination of the two.

No matter how organic your shopping is, when you sit down to a plate of leafy greens, chances are you are supporting farming methods that contribute to global warming. There are, however, other options.