By understanding melting characteristics, ice cream manufacturers can create products with the mouthfeel of full-fat products but without the calories.
Only on the hottest summer days or when we’ve been unexpectedly called away from our scoop do we experience ice cream melting in some way other than in our mouths. However, the meltdown of ice cream is an important facet of ice cream science, one that is currently under study in the Frozen Dessert Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Ice cream is a complex frozen dessert typically made from milk fat (at least 10% for the United States), sweeteners (typically sucrose), stabilizers and emulsifiers. This mix, after being pasteurized, homogenized and aged, is then frozen in a scraped-surface heat exchanger.