Gelato is an Italian frozen dessert made from water, milk and/or soy milk, combined with flavourings, sweeteners, and a stabilizing agent. The Gelato ingredients are first pasteurized then super-cooled while stirring to break up ice crystals as they form. Unlike ice cream, Gelato machinery whips almost no air into the gelato, resulting in a dense and extremely flavorful product. This allows even non-dairy gelato to match and sometimes exceed dairy-based gelato or ice cream for taste.

* Ice cream: Any frozen dessert product with 10% or more milk fat.
* Ice milk: Less than 10% milk fat and lower sweetening content.
* Frozen custard: More than 10% milkfat and egg yolk. Considered a kind of ice cream because of the high fat content.
* Sherbet: 1-2% milk fat and more sweetener than ice cream.
* Sorbet: fruit puree and no milk products
* Pop: frozen fruit puree, fruit juice, or flavored sugar water on a stick or in a flexible plastic sleeve.
* Kulfi another ice cream variant, which is dairy based, and brought to Pakistan and India by the Mughals from Persia during the 1500s, later as the result of colonialism and immigration to the West.

One important development in the twentieth century was the introduction of soft ice cream. A chemical research team in Britain (of which a young Margaret Thatcher was a member) discovered a method of doubling the amount of air in ice cream. This allowed manufacturers to use less of the actual ingredients, saving money. The ice cream was also very popular amongst consumers who preferred the light flavour, and most major ice cream brands now use this manufacturing process.