"We have a strange way to understand history," he says, placing a small white bowl of strawberry granita on the table below my nose, "but this is the way to understand."

Pressed for specifics on how he makes this connection, he responds with a rhetorical question, "What kind of strawberry do you use?"

"You need to understand the difference between this variety and all of the other ones," he explains. "Then you bring everything you can to the strawberry. You need to upgrade the flavor."

He sounds like his friend Ferran Adrià , the Spanish star chef of El Bulli restaurant , who says he likes to make dishes that taste more like the product they are made from than the product itself.

Assenza actually blushes at the comparison and smiles until he notices that I haven't touched my granita. He then makes a face that says nothing more will come from him until I taste it. I obey, and closing my eyes, the connection is made: I am in the middle of a strawberry patch.

"I choose my ingredients to find my footpath to your taste," he says.

Later, digging into a chocolate gelato at Caffè Sicilia, Californian Evan Fuller, 6, sounds like she's been taking classes from Assenza.

"It's very, very good," she says between bites. "It actually tastes like chocolate. It has more of the flavor of what it's really supposed to be. At home, it doesn't really have the flavor."

So this is better?

"Yeah," she says without hesitation.

In a nondescript ice cream shop in the north central town of Cerda, people gather around the entrance of the Gelateria Cappadonia where Antonio Cappadonia tackles the unromantic task of describing gelato making.

"These are my machines: uno, due, tre," he says, pointing out his Pastoplus 30 pasteurizer , another mixer with submarine periscope-style handles and a cooling machine that resembles an industrial Maytag. "Made in Germany -- 60,000 euros [$81,000]," he says proudly.

Wearing his Accademia della Gelateria Italiana chef's whites, he pours the base -- a mixture of milk, cream, sugar, and a powdered emulsifier -- from the pasteurizer, adds some pistachio paste from the Sicilian town of Bronte , and blends it in the mixer before pouring it into the cooler.

He lets me do the honors of pressing the button that sets the machine whirring.

Cappadonia does a nice job of explaining the process, but between the stainless steel machines that hide the action and the white tiles, fluorescent lights, and bags of emulsifier in his lab, it's not exactly the sexiest creation process in all gastronomy.

In desperation, I plunge my head into the industrial-sized can of pistachio paste and breathe in deeply. Woozy with the aroma, I lose track of time.

Downstairs in his shop, Cappadonia waves at his father at the cash register and his brother Giuseppe , who helps make gelato when he's not working at a local bank. I ask Cappadonia why he has isolated himself in a town that would be left out of the guidebooks if it wasn't for the annual artichoke festival, and he laughs.

"My father invited me to do this with him 20 years ago," he says. "Gelato is part of our 'bagagliaio culturale.' Dad saw this as a way to connect with people and do business.

"I don't care where I do it, I just want to do it well," he adds, "and this is family."

Back in Palermo, family, friends, and all walks of life are linked by gelato. Two gelaterias -- Da Carlo and Da Ciccio -- located across the street from one another on the Corso dei Mille , duke it out for their clients' affections. Da Carlo, a relative newcomer to the scene, woos Palermitans with a sign announcing "Brioche Calde con Gelato," where calde, or hot, is underlined three times. At Da Ciccio, a golden vat of Nutella topping floats over the ice cream in the cooler, and they also offer home delivery on a Vespa .

On a Sunday afternoon, both places overflow with people of all ages, all with their favorite form of gelato in hand. Two-year-old s with chocolate-covered faces mill around with goofy grins and preteen girls in fake Dolce & Gabbana clothes move in tight packs. There are middle-aged couples, grandparents, and teens on scooters.

It's horns, Vespas, sunglasses even though the sun's not out, cigarettes, litter, family, and lots of strutting. It's a little kid wearing two shades of orange clothes and his dad with the same two shades on his cone. It's a guy who rides by with a cardboard license plate taped to his scooter and a micro fender-bender in the street and the Italian-style arm flapping that goes with it.

It's a big scoop of Sicily.

Joe Ray, a food and travel writer, can be reached at www.joe-ray.com.