SC - OOP - Ice Cream

[J C Ronsen]

At 03:44 PM 6/28/00 -0700, you wrote:
>Ilia asks about making Icecream smooth.
>
>To get really good quality ice-cream you need to have a heavier
>concentration of fat (egg yolks & cream) and then you need to process it
>carefully.  the more fat, the fewer ice-crystals, but the higher risk of
>beating the cream into butter accidentally.  you also have to be sure &
>incorporate the eggs carefully so they don't scramble.  It's worth it
>though.
>Don't forget also that too much sugar or alcohol will prevent freezing.
>Eden - gelato junkie


If I remember my chemistry correctly, it's not the number of crystals that 
is the problem; it's the size of the crystals. The smaller the crystals the 
smoother the ice cream. There are two ways to fix this; 1) make sure you 
stir the mixture as it freezes to break up the crystals as they form, but 
this is time consuming and if you are doing this by hand, hard work. The 
second approch is to freeze the mixture quicker, so that it turns to ice 
cream before the ice crystals get to large. If you have a deep freezer, you 
might want to try that. Commercial ice cream makers ( If you are in Texas, 
take a trip to Blue Bell. Their's are huge.) sometimes use double walled 
mixers with super cooled alcohol or other chemcials to drop the temperature 
well below 0C.

A method that I thought up, but have never tried, is to pour liquid 
nitrogen into the mixture and super cool it very quickly. Unfortunetly, I 
would need the liquid nitrogen and a suitable container and workspace to do 
this. The way I look at it is that the mixture would freeze to fast for any 
ice crystals to form.

Good Eats, a program on The Food Channel, dedicated an episode to making 
low-crystal, smooth ice cream.



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