Avalanche experts help make better ice cream

BBC : To improve the quality of the Nestlé company’s ice cream, its food scientists teamed up with avalanche experts at the Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research in Switzerland to study ice crystal formation. Because the temperature does not remain constant in home freezers, ice cream continuously melts and then refreezes, which causes ice crystals to form, merge, and grow. The crystals affect the ice cream’s structure and, hence, its taste. As discussed in a paper published in the journal Soft Matter, x-ray tomography was used to create time-lapse studies of the evolution of ice cream’s microstructure. According to the researchers, their study of the life cycle of ice crystals in ice cream not only will help make a tastier dessert but also could provide “new insights into the coarsening mechanisms of multiphase materials and could contribute to a better understanding of complex materials.”