Pretty much every culture with milk, fruit or a bit of ice has found a way to make a frozen dessert out of it. The best-known ones from around the world are South Asian kulfi, stretchy Arabic booza and Turkish dondurma, Persian faloodeh and bastani, Italian gelato, sorbetto and granita, Mexican paletas and nieves, and the shaved-ice desserts of East and Southeast Asia, like Japanese kakigori, Korean bingsu and Filipino halo-halo. The big differences are how each one is made: churned, pounded, shaved, stirred by hand in a barrel, or simply frozen in a mold.
Our frozen treats are locally made in North Carolina, and this kind of curiosity is how our whole menu started. Our founder, Shafna Shamsuddin, grew up in Kerala, India, and she named the company after elakka, the Malayalam word for cardamom. So yes, we're biased toward anything with cardamom in it. Still, this is an honest guide: fifteen frozen desserts worth hunting down, where each one comes from, and what makes it special.
First, a quick word on terms. In the strict American sense, ice cream is a churned dairy dessert, and the FDA requires it to have at least 10 percent milkfat. A lot of the desserts below don't meet that definition at all, and that's half the fun. For a side-by-side comparison, read our guide to the differences between sorbet, gelato, ice cream and kulfi.
1. Kulfi (India, Pakistan and South Asia)
Kulfi is milk that's simmered low and slow until it thickens and picks up a gentle caramel note. It's then sweetened, flavored and frozen in molds, and traditionally it isn't churned. Since hardly any air gets in, kulfi comes out dense and creamy and melts slowly, a quality you'll really appreciate on a hot afternoon. Most food historians trace it to Mughal-era North India in the 16th century, and the name is often linked to a Persian word for a covered cup.
The classic flavors are malai (plain cream), pistachio, saffron, cardamom and mango. Some old Delhi shops even freeze kulfi inside a hollowed-out whole mango. It's also served with falooda noodles and rose syrup. We wrote a whole guide on it: What Is Kulfi?
Our Kulfi is the signature of our lineup, made with saffron, cardamom and pistachios. One honest note: ours is churned, which breaks from tradition. We're confident it's the best version around anyway.
2. Booza (Syria, Lebanon and the Levant)
Booza is the stretchy one. Pull a spoon out and it follows you. The stretch comes from two ingredients: sahlab (also spelled salep), a flour ground from orchid tubers, and mastic, a resin from trees on the Greek island of Chios that tastes faintly of pine. Instead of churning it, booza makers traditionally pound and stretch it in a chilled drum with long wooden pestles, and then they roll it in chopped pistachios.
The most famous place to eat it is Bakdash, in the Al-Hamidiyah Souq in Old Damascus. Sources disagree on the year it opened (dates range from 1885 to 1895), but either way it has been serving booza for well over a century. The word booza literally means "ice cream" in Arabic, which is why you'll often see it sold as Arabic ice cream. More in our guide: Booza: The Stretchy Arabic Ice Cream.
3. Dondurma (Turkey)
Booza has a close Turkish cousin. Maraş dondurma, named for the city of Kahramanmaraş, is made from milk, sugar, salep and mastic, and it's so firm and elastic that some shops serve it with a knife and fork. Street vendors knead it with long metal paddles and love to tease customers with the cone: they hand it over, flip it upside down, then snatch it back. The ice cream doesn't fall.
Real salep is expensive and hard to find, and Turkey has restricted its export, so many versions sold outside the country use other thickeners. If you can get the real thing, it's worth it.
4. Faloodeh (Iran)
Faloodeh is a semi-frozen dessert of thin starch noodles, usually rice vermicelli, in a syrup of sugar and rose water, finished with a squeeze of lime. It's icy, floral and sour all at once, and the noodles add a satisfying chew. It's most closely tied to Shiraz. You'll often read that faloodeh dates back to 400 BC, but that date is more legend than record. What we do know is that ancient Persians stored winter ice in domed ice houses called yakhchals, which made summer treats like this possible.
Today it's often served with sour cherry syrup or next to a scoop of saffron ice cream. Its South Asian relative, falooda, is a different dish: a layered drink-dessert of noodles, basil seeds, rose syrup and milk, often topped with kulfi.
5. Bastani sonnati (Iran)
That saffron ice cream next to the faloodeh is probably bastani sonnati, often just called Persian ice cream. It's golden from saffron, perfumed with rose water and full of pistachios, and the best versions are studded with little flakes of frozen cream that melt on your tongue. Some recipes add salep for a slightly chewy texture. It's often pressed between two thin wafers and eaten like a sandwich.
If rose and saffron sound like your thing, our Rose frozen treat balances rose water with almond, and it's a great place to start.
6. Gelato (Italy)
Gelato is Italy's dense, silky answer to ice cream. It's churned more slowly, so less air gets whipped in, and it's typically made with more milk than cream and served a little warmer than American ice cream. That's why the flavor hits you so fast. Its origin story is crowded: some sources credit Bernardo Buontalenti at the Medici court in 16th-century Florence, and a Sicilian named Francesco Procopio dei Coltelli is famous for bringing frozen desserts to Paris at his Café Procope, usually dated to 1686. Like most food origin stories, it was probably many cooks over many years.
Try pistachio, hazelnut (nocciola) or stracciatella, which is milk gelato with fine shards of chocolate.
7. Sorbetto (Italy)
Sorbetto is gelato's dairy-free sibling: fruit, sugar and water, churned until smooth. A good one tastes more like the fruit than the fruit does. Lemon is the classic, but the best gelaterias rotate through whatever's in season.
We make two sorbets, both vegan and gluten-free. Sulaimani Sorbet is black tea, cardamom and lemon, inspired by the tea served after a big feast in Muslim households across South India and the Middle East. Pineapple Hibiscus Sorbet pays tribute to the spice-and-juice stalls of Arabian souks. Browse them in our vegan collection or read our guide to the best dairy-free ice cream.
8. Granita (Sicily)
Granita is coarser than sorbet, with crystals you can see, because it's stirred or scraped as it freezes instead of churned. Its roots run back to the snow trade: for centuries, workers called nevaroli collected snow on Mount Etna and other Sicilian peaks, packed it into stone pits, and sold it in the towns below once summer came.
In eastern Sicily, granita is breakfast. You order it with a soft brioche (the kind with a little topknot of dough) and dip the bread right in. Lemon, almond and coffee topped with whipped cream are the classic orders.
9. Helado and paletas (Mexico)
In Mexico, helado usually means a creamy, dairy-based ice cream, while paletas are ice pops packed with real fruit. Paletas come two ways: de agua (water-based, closer to a sorbet on a stick) and de crema (milk or cream-based). The tradition is closely linked to Tocumbo, a small town in Michoacán, whose families spread paleterías across Mexico from the 1940s on. The La Michoacana name you see everywhere isn't one company. It's a loose network of independent shops, and many of them are owned by families with roots in Tocumbo.
Look for mango with chile, hibiscus (jamaica), tamarind, lime and coconut. Our full guide is here: Mexican Ice Cream, Paletas and Nieves.
10. Nieve de garrafa (Mexico)
Nieve means "snow," and nieve de garrafa is the old-school version. A metal canister (the garrafa) sits in a wooden barrel packed with ice and salt. The maker spins it and scrapes the freezing mixture off the sides with a wooden paddle until it's smooth. The result is lighter and icier than helado.
Oaxaca is famous for its nieves. Around the Jardín Sócrates, sometimes called the plaza of nieves, you can order leche quemada (burnt milk) next to bright pink tuna, which is prickly pear and not the fish. Plenty of stands also sell rose petal nieve.
11. Mochi ice cream (Japan and the United States)
A small ball of ice cream wrapped in soft, chewy mochi (pounded sweet rice dough). The Japanese company Lotte sold an early version called Yukimi Daifuku in 1981. In the US, credit for the modern version usually goes to Frances Hashimoto of Mikawaya, a Los Angeles Japanese confectionery, which began making it in the 1990s. Today you'll find it in nearly every American grocery freezer, in flavors from mango to matcha.
12. Kakigori (Japan)
Kakigori is ice shaved so finely that it's closer to fresh snow than a snow cone. It soaks up syrup like a sponge. The earliest written mention we know of comes from The Pillow Book, written around the year 1000 by Sei Shōnagon, a lady of the imperial court. She listed shaved ice with a sweet vine syrup, served in a new metal bowl, among the most elegant things she knew. Back then, summer ice was a luxury only the court could afford.
Today, try uji kintoki (matcha syrup with sweet red beans) or fresh strawberry with condensed milk.
13. Bingsu (South Korea)
Korean bingsu starts with shaved ice or, in many modern cafés, shaved frozen milk, which falls into soft, snowy ribbons. The classic is patbingsu, topped with sweetened red beans. Other popular toppings include injeolmi rice cakes dusted in roasted soybean powder, fresh fruit and condensed milk. Korea's royal court kept ice storehouses centuries ago, but bingsu as we know it took shape in the 20th century, influenced by Japanese shaved ice, and red bean versions became common once sugar was easier to come by after the 1950s. One bowl is usually big enough for two to share.
14. Halo-halo (Philippines)
Halo-halo means "mix-mix," and that's the instruction. A tall glass is layered with sweetened beans, jackfruit, nata de coco, kaong (sugar palm fruit) and shaved ice, then evaporated milk is poured over it and the whole thing is crowned with leche flan, ube halaya (purple yam jam) and often a scoop of ube ice cream. Most historians trace it to Japanese immigrants in the Philippines before World War II, who sold shaved ice with sweet beans. They don't agree on whether it grew out of Japanese mitsumame or kakigori. Filipino cooks kept adding local ingredients until it became something entirely their own.
15. Spaghettieis (Germany)
Here's the trickster of the list. Spaghettieis is vanilla ice cream pressed through a spaetzle press (or a potato ricer) so it looks like a plate of noodles, then topped with strawberry sauce as the "tomato sauce" and white chocolate shavings as the "parmesan." Dario Fontanella is generally credited with inventing it at his family's ice cream parlor in Mannheim in 1969. He never patented it, so you'll find it in ice cream cafés all over Germany.
Weird and unique ice cream flavors from around the world
If you're the person who always orders the strangest thing on the board, here's your short list:
- Mastic (Syria and Turkey): resinous and a little piney, the backbone of booza and dondurma.
- Leche quemada (Oaxaca, Mexico): milk deliberately scorched for a smoky, toasty sweetness.
- Ube (Philippines): purple yam with a vanilla-nutty flavor and a color that doesn't look real.
- Black sesame (Japan): toasty, savory, a little like liquid halva.
- Saffron and rose water (Iran): floral, golden and very old-world.
- Mole, octopus and rattlesnake (Mexico): served as nieves at the yearly Feria de la Nieve in Santiago Tulyehualco, on the edge of Mexico City. Mostly for bragging rights.
Our own lineup has a few curveballs too. Vanilla Milk gets Tellicherry black pepper, sea salt and ghee. Jinn's Peanut Unda is a vegan peanut-and-rice treat inspired by a Keralan sweet, made with jaggery, coconut milk and chocolate. Carolina Peach Sonker folds in pancake and orange blossom as a nod to a Surry County pie. And Pineapple Hibiscus Sorbet hides a pistachio-habanero brittle.
How to taste your way around the world at home
You don't need a passport for most of this. Start with your city's paletería, Indian grocery, Korean café or Italian gelateria and work your way down the list. For the flavors we make, here's where to start:
- For South Asian flavors: Kulfi, or the Kerala Roots 4-pack with Plantain, Jinn's Peanut Unda, Kulfi and Vanilla Milk.
- For Middle Eastern flavors: Rose and Q'ahwa, our coffee with cardamom and dates.
- For something bright and dairy-free: the vegan collection, or the Golden Hour 4-pack.
- For a little of everything: the Midnight Cravings 4-pack (Kulfi, Vanilla Milk, Rose and Strawberry Hot Chocolate) or any of our curated 4-packs.
Every flavor has a touch of cardamom, and every pack ships frozen on dry ice. See how shipping works. Prefer to taste in person? Find us at an upcoming pop-up or event, or ask about carrying Elaka at your café or shop on our wholesale page.
Frequently asked questions
What are some unique ice creams from around the world?
Some of the most unique are stretchy booza from Syria and dondurma from Turkey, dense kulfi from South Asia, Persian faloodeh made with frozen rice noodles and rose water, Filipino halo-halo, Korean bingsu made from shaved frozen milk, and German spaghettieis, which is ice cream shaped to look like pasta.
What is Asian ice cream called?
There's no single name, because Asia has many frozen dessert traditions. Popular ones include kulfi (India and Pakistan), mochi ice cream and kakigori (Japan), bingsu (Korea), halo-halo (Philippines), and faloodeh and bastani (Iran).
What is the stretchy ice cream called?
Stretchy ice cream is usually booza, from the Levant, or Turkish dondurma. Both get their elastic, chewy texture from salep, a flour made from orchid tubers, and mastic, a tree resin.
What is the difference between gelato and ice cream?
Gelato is churned more slowly, so it has less air, and it's typically made with more milk and less cream than American ice cream. It's also served a bit warmer, which makes it taste denser and more intense.
Which country invented ice cream?
No single country gets the credit. People in Persia, China, the Arab world and the Mediterranean were making chilled and iced sweets long ago, and churned dairy ice cream developed gradually in Europe and spread from there. Most origin stories you'll read are part history and part legend.
The best way to understand any of these desserts is to taste one. Pick a flavor that's new to you, share it with someone, and see where it takes you. Start making memories today with our full lineup of flavors.
