[3] The name Procopio was adopted from the historian Procopius, whose Secret History, the Anekdota, long known of, had been discovered in the Vatican Library and published for the first time ever in 1623: it told the scandals of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, the empress-consort Theodora, and his court.

His grandfather Francesco was also a fisherman from Aci Trezza who built gelatiere machines (ice cream makers) part-time, when he was not fishing.

[citation needed] Cutò acquired the skills to become a cook, possibly in Palermo on his way to France, arriving in Paris sometime between 1670 and 1674.

[8] There he joined the guild of the distillateurs-limonadiers (English: distiller - soft drinks manufacturers) and apprenticed under the leadership of an Armenian immigrant named Pascal who had a kiosk (la loge de la limonade, English: lemonade stand) on rue de Tournon selling refreshments, including lemonade and coffee.

[11][page needed] Cutò had learned in about 1680 how to make a beverage of ice made of lemonade using salt to lower its temperature and keep cooler longer.

[13][incomplete short citation] This gave him exclusive rights to these unique sweet and cool products from his kiosk booth at the Foire Saint-Germain.

There had been a café in Marseille in 1644 before Pascal and Cutò that soon became defunct, and a Levantine had opened a coffee house in Paris in 1643, which had also failed.

[8] He introduced the Italian "ice cream" gelato at his café and is one of the first to sell this new European product directly to the public.

Notable people who have frequented the café include Maximilien Robespierre, Victor Hugo, Paul Verlaine, Pierre Beaumarchais, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Alain-René Lesage, Georges Danton, Jean-Paul Marat, Honoré de Balzac and Denis Diderot.

[1][page needed] Even Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Paul Jones, Oscar Wilde, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Napoleon Bonaparte and Voltaire visited Procopio's cafe not only for coffee and intellectual conversations, but for gelato.

[19] One of his children became a witty doctor, Dr. Michel Procope-Couteau (1684-1753), who wrote "L'art de faire des Garcons" and practiced in Paris.