Ice cream is one of the milk products that adults and children enjoy the most. Its beginnings date back to time immemorial, when only kings and nobles could enjoy it. But how did they keep the temperature? According to history, in the sixteenth century it was discovered that ethyl nitrate when mixed with snow produced very low temperatures; this discovery would have great importance in the manufacture of ice cream. In 1600, the Italian Procopius created a machine that homogenized fruits, sugar and ice, resulting in a true ice cream. Then in 1846, in the United States, Nancy Jhonson invented the first automatic ice cream maker, which laid the foundation for the emergence of industrial ice cream. A few years later, in 1851, Jacobo Fussel founded the first ice cream company in the United States.
Today, advances in the refrigeration industry have made it possible to optimize resources to achieve artisanal and industrial ice cream manufacturing with all the essential characteristics of this delicious milk-based product.
Ice cream is composed of simple raw materials: milk, cream, butter (butter), purified water, fruit juice and sugars, among others that are added depending on whether the manufacture is industrial or artisanal. These raw materials must be in a refrigeration room, with a temperature of between 0 and 2 ºC, where they are kept in order to be in the best conditions. When making the mixture, some manufacturers say that it must be made in a pasteurizing machine that has a heat treatment for the destruction of bacteria, at already established time and temperature conditions. An elevated temperature of between 80 and -85ºC is applied to this, which is quickly reduced to -4 or -6ºC, so that the pathogenic bacteria are destroyed.
Then, this mixture is homogenized, making the molecules that make up the ice cream as small as possible and that it has a better body, a softer texture, smoother tissue, in addition to improving melting and storage properties. In the maturation the mixture is placed at a temperature of between 4/6ºC, in this phase all the raw materials will take the characteristics of the ice cream, smell, flavor, color, etc.
After these phases and so that the ice cream has the necessary consistency to be consumed, it is important to carry out a freezing process that is carried out in a machine called a freezer. In this the ice cream is cooled to a desired consistency and stirred by introducing a certain amount of air under finely determined conditions.
After the freezing process is carried out, the ice cream must be put in freezing tunnels where the hardening of the ice cream is carried out. This is the most important part of the cold chain and this is where the quality of the ice cream is determined.
