It lowers the freezing temperature of water in ice cream.
THE THREE ICE-CREAMS BRANDS:
The three ice cream brands which we opted are
1) Ben and jerry
2) Pierre
3) Haagen dazs
BEN AND JERRY
Ingredients:
The common ingredients present in ben and jerry ice cream are cream, skim milk, liquid sugar, water egg yolks, sugar, guar gum, vanilla extract, vanilla beans and carrageenan.
Functionality list in Ben and Jerry ice-cream
- Sugar – sweetens the product
- Total solids – freezing point reduction
- Water – provides liquid medium
- Air – increases the volume
- Stabilizers – smoothens the texture
- Emulsifiers – stiffness to body and smoothness of texture
- Egg yolk – texture and body improvement
- Flavour – base flavour
Consumer Preferences:
Consumer preferences for Ben and Jerry ice cream are low calories, great taste and flavour.
PIERRE:
Ingredients:
The common ingredients present in pierre ice cream are cream, skim milk, buttermilk, sugar, corn syrup, egg yolk, diary whey, pure vanilla extract, stabilizers-emulsifiers combination to maintain smoothness (mono and diglycerides, guar gum, bean gum, carrageenan), annatto.
Functionality list in pierre ice cream:
- Sugar – sweetens the product
- Total solids – texture and body improvement
- Water – provides liquid medium
- Air – increase the volume
- Stabilizers – smoothens the texture
- Emulsifiers – stiffness to body and smoothens the texture
- Egg yolk – delicate characteristic flavour
Consumer Preferences for pierre ice cream are better flavour, low calories and worth the price.
HAAGEN DAZS
Ingredients:
The common ingredients in Haagen Dazs ice cream are cream, skim milk, cane sugar, egg yolk, vanilla extract.
Functionality list present in Haagen Dazs ice cream
- Cane Sugar – sweetens the product
- Total solids – whip ability improvement
- Water – acts as solvent
- Air – increase the volume
- Stabilizers – enhance viscosity
- Emulsifiers – stiffness to body and smoothens the texture
- Egg yolk – improved whip ability
- Flavour – base flavour
Consumer Preferences for Haagen Dazs ice cream are better flavour, nothing artificial are added and worth the price.
Teaching Tool:
The performed experiment is to determine the surface hardness of each ice-cream which is one of the most essential and desired properties by the customers.[1] Ice cream hardness is effected mainly by micro-structures such as air bubbles size , over-run and ice crystal size. The hardness of the ice-cream directly affects the scoopability. Nature of the fat and serum phase also affects the hardness of the ice-cream, giving an example, larger fat clusters and high viscosity of the serum phase will result in higher hardness to the ice-cream texture. Hardness of surface is usually interpreted using penetrometer or puncture probe[5].Resistance of the product as it is scooped will determine the extent of gumminess, fluffiness, heaviness or weakness of the product. Customers preference is always that the ice-creams should be easy to scoop.
Experiment:
High amount of over-run will result in decrease of hardness and bigger the size of the ice crystal, harder the ice-cream becomes. This performed experiment mimics the mechanism of a penetrometer or puncture probe. The hardness of ice-cream is measured 7 minutes after the ice-cream is taken out of the fridge. This is basically done to reduce the refrigerator affects on the ice-cream. The hardness here is measured by dropping a chopstick through a straw into the ice-cream. All these chopsticks are dropped into the three selected samples from a fixed height. The depth of the penetration will then be measured and can be used as a measure as a parameter for hardness. The deeper the chopstick penetrates into the ice-cream, the softer the ice-cream is. This experiment is performed on the three ice-creams which have been selected (i.e) Haagen Dazs, Pierre and Ben and Jerrys[2] . After the chop stick is dropped into the ice-cream, the depth of the penetration is immediately measured by a scale. After this experiment was performed and results were tabulated, it was clear that, Ben and Jerrys was the softest in texture among the three. It was also confirmed that the hardness of the ice-creams will also be effected by ice phase volume.
Hardness analysis:
The ice-creams were first refrigerated for 3 hours. The samples to be measured were taken out and left outside for about 7 minutes .The chopstick was dropped from a height of about 25 cms for each of the samples. They were then dropped from a straw into these samples. The measure of the penetration depths for Haagen Dazs, Peters and were 1.2 cms, 1.03 cm and 0.6 cms respectively. The results were then tabulated based on the measured penetration depths.
Conclusion:
After the surface hardness experiment, it was clearly evident that, Ben and Jerrys was the softest of the ice-cream as it was easiest to penetrate and is the highest of the customer preference in terms of texture. While there may be major differences in hardness for different flavoured ice-creams, (i.e) those with big particles like cookie dough pieces, chocolate chips and those without. Ice-creams in cones can also be tested for hardness, crispiness and brittleness which also changes with the formulation of the cones and their design.
