There’s nothing quite like an ice cream on a hot day, and eating it before it melts too much is part of the fun.
Ice cream is a soft solid, and its appeal is a complex combination of ‘mouthfeel’, taste and appearance, which are all strongly affected by the underlying microstructure. We know that changes in the microstructure of ice cream occur at storage temperatures above -30°C, so they will occur during shipping, and in freezers at the supermarket and at home. In their ongoing quest to create the perfect ice cream, an international team of researchers brought samples to Diamond to investigate the temperature dependence of these microstructural changes, and the underlying physical mechanisms that control microstructural stability.