Friday, September 18, 2009

Food Science Friday: Ice Cream

(Ugandan Vanilla and Ohio Heirloom Pumpkin & Mascarpone
Ice Cream from our visit to Jeni's)

Today's topic is ice cream! Here are three fun food science facts about ice cream:

1. Did you know that ice cream is actually a foam? That's right, a frozen foam of air dispersed in the frozen ice cream matrix. Air is whipped into the ice cream, which gives it a unique texture! Overrun is a technical term and calculation that describes the volume of air whipped into the ice cream.

2. The tasty bits of things that you find in ice cream like nuts, cookie pieces, chunks of fruit etc are called inclusions. So if you want to show off your ice cream knowledge, next time you eat cookie dough ice cream, feel free to comment on the delicious inclusions!

3. There is a federal standard that requires ice cream to contain a minimum of 10% milk fat. Premium ice creams often contain even more!

Hooray for ice cream!