The Story of Ice Cream

WHAT IS ICE CREAM

Ice cream is an enormously popular food. The term ice cream in its broadest sense covers a wide range of different types of frozen dessert. The main ones are dairy ice cream - a frozen, aerated mixture of dairy ingredients, sugars and flavors.

non-dairy ice cream - made with milk proteins and vegetable fat. gelato - an Italian-style custard-based ice cream that contains egg

yolks.

frozen yoghurt - which may contain lactic acid organisms, or simply

yoghurt flavor.

milk ice - similar to ice cream, but un-aerated and containing less dairy

fat. sorbet - fruit based, aerated sugar syrup that contains neither fat nor milk.
sherbet - similar to a sorbet, but containing some milk or cream. water ice - frozen sugar syrup with flavour and colour, such as an ice lolly

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The legal definition of ice cream varies from country to country. In the UK ice cream is defined as a frozen food product containing a minimum of 5% fat and 7.5% milk solids other than fat (i.e. protein, sugars and minerals), which is obtained by heattreating and subsequently freezing an emulsion of fat, milk solids and sugar (or sweetener), with or without other substances. Dairy ice cream must in addition contain no fat other than milk fat, with the exception of fat that is present in another ingredient, for example egg, flavouring, or emulsifier. In the USA, ice cream must contain at least 10% milk fat and 20% total milk solids, and must weigh a minimum of 0.54 kg per Litter. Until 1997, it was not permitted to call a product ice cream in the USA if it contained vegetable fat.

Ice cream is often categorized as

premium, Standard economy.

Premium ice cream is generally made from best quality ingredients and has a relatively high amount of dairy fat and a low amount of air (hence it is relatively expensive). Economy ice cream is made from cheaper ingredients (e.g. vegetable fat) and contains more air. However, these terms have no legal standing, and one manufacturers economy ice cream may be similar to a standard ice cream from another.

Ice cream is an extremely complex, intricate and delicate substance. In fact, it has been called just about the most complex food colloid of all. The science of ice cream consists of understanding its ingredients, processing, microstructure and texture, and crucially, the links between them. This requires a whole range of scientific disciplines, including physical chemistry, food science, colloid science, chemical engineering, microscopy, materials science and consumer science