Beneath the Sweetness
Ice cream, gelato, frozen yogurt, sorbet, and sherbet—all of these desserts are very similar, but not many know the differences between them. Not that it matters—they all taste amazing. This Ice Cream Day, I invite you to dig deeper into the differences between these frozen desserts.
What is Ice Cream?
This might seem like a simple answer. But actually, the food and its components are a lot more complicated than people think. Ice cream is a colloid, or a suspension of microscopic insoluble particles in another substance. In this case, insoluble, nonpolar fat is suspended in a structure of polar, water, ice, and sugar. There is also a fair amount of air suspended in the mixture to give the ice cream a fluffy texture.
How Ice Cream is Made
The first part of ice cream is creating the mix. The base ingredients of the mix are milk, cream, and sugar (or non-dairy/sugar-free substitutes). The mix is then pasteurized to kill any harmful pathogens. Flavor is added after pasteurization. Once the mix is completed, it must be frozen and whipped simultaneously. In factories and ice cream shops, a special machine does all the work. In home ice cream makers, a hand crank is used. In our Ziploc bag recipe, the ice and salt do the freezing while the shaking does the whipping.
Difference between Ice Cream
and Other Frozen Desserts
Now what exactly ice cream is and how it’s made, it’s easier to compare it to other frozen desserts. Legally, ice cream must contain at least 10% milkfat and 6% nonfat milk solids. Gelato is made with a greater ratio of whole milk to cream, so it has less fat. It is also churned more slowly, so less air whipped into it during the churning process. This results in the denser, elastic texture of gelato. Frozen yogurt is not yogurt that is frozen. Instead, the cultures are added to the ice cream mix and the rest of the process proceeds as normal. It has a milder taste because of less lactic acid compared to regular yogurt. Sorbet doesn’t have any dairy in it at all. It’s just fruit and sugar blended into a fluffy, frozen consistency. Sherbet is very similar to sugar, but it has a little bit of dairy in it (around 2-3% milkfat). It’s still nowhere near the amount of ice cream, so the flavor is comparatively much lighter.
20 SETH