To make To make the perfect ice cream, you first need a dairy base. Natural proteins, fats, and sugars create a rich, unique mouthfeel. We added fresh cream to give it an even smoother texture. The introduction of sugar is not only for sweetness. Similar to spreading salt on snow, it lowers the freezing point and minimizes ice formation. You can now mix a variety of flavors, from typical flavors (chocolate chips and vanilla pods) to bolder flavors (spices, salt, and booze).
This recipe achieves just under half of the ideal doneness. Next, 0.5 percent emulsifiers and stabilizers are added to the liquid to help water and fat stick together. The mix is homogenized, then cooled and aged for 24 hours at 5 degrees Celsius (40 Fahrenheit) for a richer, smoother flavor before being frozen.
Next comes the secret ingredient. “We are selling air,” says Elsebeth Boungard Andersen, product manager at Tetra Pak, a Swedish multinational food packaging and processing company. “Half of the volume of your favorite ice cream container is made up of air.However, it is these air bubbles and whipped texture that create the unique texture that melts in your mouth, bringing out the deliciousness. ”
At Tetra Pak’s Product Development Center in Aarhus, Denmark, a laboratory where the biggest and smallest ice cream brands test and sample their latest experiments, air is an invisible and precious commodity. During the freezing stage, where the mixture is cooled to -5 degrees Celsius (23 degrees Fahrenheit) in a rotating cylinder, Dasher’s scraper knife not only scoops out the frozen quality ingredients, but also whisks them in the air. Air bubbles stabilized by fat globules and proteins create a soft, familiar and luxurious feel. “Dosing has to be very precise,” Boungard says. “Ice cream is a science. Too much air makes it foamy; too little air makes it difficult to scoop and eat.”
The exact dosage will vary depending on the recipe. The lower the overrun, that is, the rate at which the volume of the mixture is increased by air, the higher the quality of the product. Handmade gelato has a denser texture, and its overrun can be as little as 20%. Affordable supermarket ice cream can even have an overage rate of more than 100 percent.
These are just a few of the complex chemical reactions involved in creating the world’s favorite dessert. Tetra Pak may be famous for its packaging, but it also commands a sizable slice of the estimated $113 billion ice cream industry. Each of the company’s continuous freezers typically pumps out 4,000 liters per hour for small producers looking to scale up. In addition to tubs, its production line produces 2 million ice cream sticks every day. Major customers are also using the Aarhus facility to test new concepts. (“We are in the Silicon Valley of ice cream,” Andersen says.)
Tetra Pak’s ice cream engineers have certainly revolutionized the industry. In the late 1980s, the technology allowed ice cream to be extruded onto a stick at a lower temperature, creating more air bubbles and a more premium taste. That product became Magnum Classic. Collaborative robots (cobots) now ensure that each scoop contains the same amount of sauce without overfilling large quantities on the factory floor. Meanwhile, their human colleagues test new prototypes via 3D printers.
(tag translation) science
