Originally Posted by
Perche
That's an interesting observation. In Italy milk and eggs are not typically kept in the refrigerator in stores, or at home. They are kept on regular grocery store shelves in the store, or in the cabinet at home. People with small apartments, meaning many people, store their milk and eggs in their empty oven to make maximal use of available space. Milk and eggs aren't considered to be foods that need refrigeration.
For the milk, that's UHT pasteurized shelf stable milk. It still needs to be refrigerated after you open it. From my experience, if you make gelato with that, you'll taste a difference. Not a bad taste, but not what you're used to from your favorite gelateria.
Regarding eggs, that's a difference in how the US and Europe deal with food safety. In the US, eggs are required to be washed and refrigerated - losing their waxy bloom in the process, whereas in Europe they are not washed and do not require refrigeration. The bloom is there to keep bacteria out of the egg, but Salmonella can still be present because of the way we produce eggs here. In Europe (or at least the UK), they vaccinate their hens against salmonella and leave the bloom on to keep everything else out, and with that they do not require refrigeration. Two different approaches seeking the same outcome. In my experience, the taste of eggs has everything to do with what they eat (and is tangentially related to the conditions they're raised in) - I don't buy factory farmed eggs because they taste noticeably different and I also don't agree with how those chickens are raised and treated, but that's another topic. The best eggs I ever used to get were from a family friend who had them in his backyard. He owned a pizzeria, and those chickens got leftovers in addition to what they foraged.