The Dana Centre at the Science Museum is a pretty cool concept – an adult focused venue it hosts a variety of
evening events focusing on contemporary science. Tonight’s event, though still adult-only, would appeal to the child in all of us: The Science Behind Ice Cream.

We had two speakers, Dr Chris Clark, from R&D at Unilever to give us his perspective on ice cream and Christian Oddono, from the famed Oddono’s in South Kensington to give us his perspective on gelati. Both were compelling and charming speakers, though of course the topic was quite interesting of itself!

Dr Chris Clark went first and I tell you there is so much about ice cream that I don’t know. For example, ice cream is at least 50% air with the other half made up of ice (30%), fat (4.5%-15%) which is used to stabilise the air bubbles to increase creaminess in ice-cream and the balance a “matrix” – a sticky substance which is composed of milk, sugars and stabilisers. He also talked us through how you make ice cream including olden days when they used to “refrigerate” ice cream using salt and ice only. No one quite knows who or when ice cream was made but his favourite story is that ice cream was invented by Mongolian Horsemen. Ice cream really needs two basic elements – cold and movement, so the theory was that when the horsemen were taking cream in containers as provisions for long journies the horses galloping caused air bubbles/ice crystals to form in the cream and of course in Mongolia it was so cold that it froze thus the creation of ice cream. Whether its true or not the story seems quite a romantic story of the origins of ice cream.

Then the demonstration part of his talk. After donning all the necessary equipment (goggles and gloves) he took a tub of chocolate custard, a bottle of liquid nitrogen, a wooden spoon and stainless steel bowl and ta-da he had chocolate “ice cream”. It kind of looked a bit of a mess but we could see where he was going – cold and stirring (causing the air bubbles.)

So the secret to really fine velvety smooth ice cream is a lot of fat (so you’ll find that a Magnum ice cream probably has about 4x the amount of fat of regular ice cream), but of course that wouldn’t be very good for our long term health! Therefore Unilever are trying to develop a way to keep sugar and fat contents low but still allow them to produce this ice cream and one way is to make the fat droplets really really small. Let’s see how they go! At this point of the talk Christian made an observation that fat goes the pleasure zone of your head so that’s why sorbets are less pleasurable than ice cream – because they have limited fat. As in all things there is research going on in this area to make sorbet more pleasurable.

Another way you can compare ice cream is that a higher quality ice cream like Ben and Jerry’s is going to feel physically heavier than a cheaper ice cream – and that’s why ice creams are sold by volume not weight.

I could have listened to Chris speak on ice cream all day but he wrapped it up and we got into our taste testing session! Crazy flavours of gelati that were home produced so to speak by Christian at his gelati store. The flavours were:

1. Salmon. This really tasted like a cold salmon mousse. Taste was much improved when eaten with the lovely waffle cone.
2. Mustard (Wholegrain Yellow Mustard). Though I probably wouldn’t eat too much of this one the heat in this ice cream was strangely refreshing in a way that say a chilli or wasabi flavour gelati wouldn’t be. Really strong flavours but like the Salmon the taste was much improved when combined with the waffle cone it came in.
3. Banana, Parmesan and Garlic. In a toasted sandwich this is actually exactly the kind of thing I’d eat (though I’d probably also through in bacon or ham ….) but in a gelati? Odd! Apparently this came from some ice cream creation contest that Heston Blumenthal was judging at some food fair a few years ago. He awarded it second place … behind a bombay mix flavour! Taste-wise this gelati really grew on me – the sweetness of the banana followed by the sharpness of the parmesan and garlic. But I suspect its not for everyone …

4. Chilli chocolate. Then we moved on to more regular and dessert like gelati. I wouldn’t normally go for a chocolate ice cream/gelati but this one was divine. Probably because the chocolate was very rich.
5. Honey and Lavendar. The best flavour of the evening I think it terms of actual palatability. Very very sweet though.
6. Green Tea. A refreshing flavour to have as the last.

Interestingly like a wine tasting the others at our table disposed of their ice creams after having a bit of a taste … but I wasn’t going to waste any part of them. 😉

Whilst we were being served our gelati poor Christian had the difficult task of talking! Clearly the audience attention was split between the tasting and his talk. He was quite a compelling speaker and told us of how he started his business (his background is actually in finance), speaking of the time his shop was featured in an episode of “Out of the Frying Pan”, and then describing the differences between gelati and ice cream. In essence gelati is focused more on using fresh ingredients, use of a different machine, and the fact it has a greater overrun than ice cream (that is, you can make more in volume) so it freezes a lot harder. He mentioned a few good gelati shops in London including Marine Ices (which has been on my to do list for a few years now!) Christian also spoke of the impact on the environment, e.g. sourcing fresh ingredients, and even psychology – he avoids colouring in his gelati as it impacts the behaviour of children.

Here are some fun facts:
– The top 3 flavours in England (according to Unilever) are: Vanilla, Chocolate and Strawberry!
– The worst flavours made by Oddono’s and Unilever were Guiness and a Pink Grape Fruit Ice Lolly respectively
– The Unilever Holy Grail is Fresh Strawberry ice cream. The problem being that as soon as you crush strawberry it loses its flavour.

It was an enthralling evening … even if my belly is aching a bit from all that ice cream! Heh heh!