Gelato Pastes & Concentrates

Gelato pastes are where the flavour of a gelato actually comes from. The base supplies structure, body and freezing behaviour; the paste supplies identity. A gelateria that gets its bases right and its pastes wrong sells competent, forgettable gelato — and competent, forgettable gelato is the most common product in the category.

What a paste is, in practice

A paste is an ingredient transformed until its flavour survives dilution. A hazelnut becomes gelato-flavouring only after roasting and milling release its oils; a lemon becomes one only after its aromatic fraction is concentrated far enough that thirty grams can carry a whole litre. Everything in this category is some version of that operation, and the differences between products are differences in how it was done.

Two families run through the range. Cream pastes carry flavour in fat — nuts, chocolate, coffee, vanilla, the Sicilian speciality compounds. Fruit pastes carry it in sugar, acid and fruit solids. The distinction matters more than the label on the pail, because it determines what the paste does to your balance sheet the moment it enters the mix.

Dosage is the specification

The number that describes a paste is not its price and not its purity claim; it is the grams per litre of mix at which the manufacturer expects it to work. Read that number and most of the product's character follows.

The inverse relationship between purity and dosage is the whole economics of the category. Bonificatore Agrolina sits at one gram per litre because it is a corrective for another product, not a flavour in its own right. Cassata Siciliana sits at 250 because most of what is in the pail is not flavouring at all — it is the ricotta and candied fruit that make the flavour recognisable.

Choosing a paste

Three questions decide it.

What is the flavour carrier? Nut pastes bring fat, which softens the finished gelato and slows its melt. Fruit pastes bring sugar and acid, which lower the freezing point and can push a tub past scoopable into soupy if the base was already sweet. Neither is a problem if you plan for it; both are a problem if you swap one paste for another and change nothing else.

What purity are you buying? A 100 per cent nut paste and a compound paste of the same nut are different products at different dosages. Elenka's pistachio line makes the point cleanly: Oroverde from Etna, Trinacria from Sicilian and Mediterranean growing areas and Puro 100% from established foreign production are all dosed at 80 grams, and all three declare no added flavourings or artificial colourings. What separates them is where the nut grew and how it was roasted, which shows up as a difference you can taste rather than a difference you can read off a specification.

What is the finished product? A paste destined for a display tub, a single-portion dessert and a semifreddo behave differently once frozen. Higher fat pastes stay softer at service temperature, which is an advantage in a tub and a liability in a moulded dessert that has to hold an edge.

Toasting level is a buying decision, not a detail

Within a single nut, roast level changes the product more than origin does. The hazelnut line runs from a gentle roast that keeps delicate, floral, persistent notes and a lighter colour, through medium, to an intense roast that produces dark colour and a robust flavour that announces itself from the first bite. Piemonte I.G.P. sits at the gentle end and is dosed at 120 grams because the flavour is deliberately restrained; Laurus sits at the intense end and is dosed at 80 because it is not.

This is the axis most operators get wrong when they switch supplier. A hazelnut gelato that "tastes different now" has usually moved one step along the roast scale, not changed origin. Ask for the roast level before you ask for the price.

What a paste does to your balance sheet

Adding 100 grams of a nut paste per kilogram of mix can add three or four points of fat, which shows up as a gelato that is heavy on the palate and slow to melt. A fruit paste at the same dosage may add six or seven points of sugar, which shows up as a tub that never firms properly and pulls off the spatula in strings.

Recalculate solids after adding any paste above about 60 grams per kilogram. The method — and what to do when the numbers come out wrong — is set out in How to Balance a Gelato Recipe, and the product-selection side is covered in Choosing the Right Gelato Paste.

The three common mistakes

Over-dosing. The most frequent, and the hardest to detect from behind the counter: the maker becomes accustomed to the intensity long before the customer does. Taste at the manufacturer's low figure, wait a full freezing cycle, and judge it cold. Flavour perception at mix temperature is not flavour perception at minus twelve.

Ignoring what the paste contributes. A paste is an ingredient, not a seasoning. Every gram of it displaces a gram of something else and brings its own fat, sugar and solids.

Buying on price per kilogram. A cheaper paste used at twice the dosage is not cheaper, and a paste that needs a compensating change to the base is dearer than either figure suggests.

Storage, and the separation nobody accounts for

Pure nut pastes separate in the pail. The oil rises, the solids settle, and after a few weeks standing there is a layer of free oil on top and a dense, dry mass underneath. This is normal, it is not a fault, and it is not a sign the product has gone off.

What it does mean is that a pail dosed without stirring gives a different product every time. The first scoops are oil-rich, which reads as a thin flavour and adds fat the recipe did not plan for. The last scoops are solids-rich, which reads as a stronger, drier gelato that also behaves differently on the spatula. Two tubs from the same pail, three weeks apart, can be noticeably different products, and the difference gets blamed on everything except the pail.

Stir the pail back to uniformity before every use, from the bottom, until no oil layer remains visible. Keep pails sealed, cool and out of direct light — nut oils oxidise, and a rancid note in a pistachio paste is irreversible and expensive. Use clean, dry utensils and never return unused product, as with everything else in a gelateria. And decant nothing into a smaller container without labelling it, because a decanted paste loses its code, its batch and its dosage in one movement.

What we cannot tell you yet

Ingredient declarations, allergen statements, shelf life and storage conditions are absent from these pages, and absent is deliberate — no Elenka specification sheet is held for the Australian range. Nut pastes are the products where this matters most, since tree nuts and peanuts must be declared individually under Australian labelling rules and the obligation falls on the business serving the customer. Request the sheet for any product you are considering and we will obtain it from the manufacturer.

The full range sits in the 2026 catalogue. Pastes are dosed into a finished white base, and they pair with variegates far more often than most menus exploit.