Abstract
Ice cream is a complex multi-phase colloidal soft-solid and its three-dimensional microstructure plays a critical role in determining the oral sensory experience or mouthfeel. Using in-line phase contrast synchrotron X-ray tomography, we capture the rapid evolution of the ice cream microstructure during heat shock conditions in situ and operando, on a time scale of minutes. The further evolution of the ice cream microstructure during storage and abuse was captured using ex situ tomography on a time scale of days. The morphology of the ice crystals and unfrozen matrix during these thermal cycles was quantified as an indicator for the texture and oral sensory perception. Our results reveal that the coarsening is due to both Ostwald ripening and physical agglomeration, enhancing our understanding of the microstructural evolution of ice cream during both manufacturing and storage. The microstructural evolution of this complex material was quantified, providing new insights into the behavior of soft-solids and semi-solids, including many foodstuffs, and invaluable data to both inform and validate models of their processing.
Highlights
Ice cream is a widely consumed dairy product whose complex microstructure determines its texture and oral sensory perception
A tomographic scan was collected at 270 K prior to the onset of fast cooling
Except for air cells, it was not possible to resolve structural features in the material at this temperature. This indicates that it was above the freezing point of the ice cream composition under investigation and significant supercooling is required before ice crystal nucleation occurs
Summary
Ice cream is a widely consumed dairy product whose complex microstructure determines its texture and oral sensory perception. Pinzer et al used a laboratory X-ray microCT in a cold room to investigate the long-term microstructural evolution of ice cream and quantified changes in air cell and ice crystal size during thermal cycles between −5 to −16 ◦ C over a period of 24 h [18]. The use of high brilliance synchrotron X-ray computed tomography (sCT), coupled with a precise cold stage, to study ice cream microstructures has recently been reported by the current authors In this prior study, we obtained the three-dimensional quantification of microstructural changes arising from the thermal cycling at low heating and cooling rates over periods of weeks. Variations in the size distribution of ice crystals and unfrozen matrix were followed during the thermal-induced microstructural evolutiontoasprecisely these areand recognized indicators changes in quantification techniques were developed robustly as evaluate the for structural characteristics in the ice cream samples. Matrix were followed during the thermal-induced microstructural evolution as these are recognized
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