Fine tuning a recipe
In this tutorial I will show how you can fine tune your recipe to reach certain parameters.
I will use an example going from one recipe and changing it to reach the target parameters.
The milk is 3% fat and the cream is 40% fat in this tutorial.
Initial recipe
| Ingredient | Weight (g) | Amount (%) |
|---|---|---|
| Milk | 450.0 | 44.82 |
| Cream | 350.0 | 34.86 |
| Skim milk powder | 40.0 | 3.98 |
| Sucrose | 120.0 | 11.95 |
| Dextrose | 40.0 | 3.98 |
| Lecithin | 4.0 | 0.40 |
This is a no-egg recipe giving me the following properties.
- Butter fat 15.3%
- Total fat 15.3%
- MSNF 9.7%
- Total Solids 41%
- PAC 248
- POD 156
Goal targets
I feel this recipe needs some tweaking. I want to add some egg yolks because I like what they do to the texture and creaminess of the ice cream. I also want to increase the sweetness(POD) and the freezing point depression(PAC) to make it more soft out of the freezer. So my target parameters looks like this.
- Butterfat 15-17%
- Total fat 16-18%
- MSNF 7-9%
- Total solids 42%
- PAC 270-275
- POD 170
Adding eggs and changing the milk/cream ratio
I start by adding three egg yolks (51g). I also reduce the lecithin to 3g which is equal to the lecithin from two eggs. So the emulsifiers in this recipe equals 5 egg yolks, 3 from eggs and 2 from lecithin. When doing this the butter fat goes down to 14.6% so I change the milk/cream ratio to 400g/400g. This gives the following recipe
| Ingredient | Weight (g) | Amount (%) |
|---|---|---|
| Milk | 400.0 | 37.95 |
| Cream | 400.0 | 37.95 |
| Skim milk powder | 40.0 | 3.8 |
| Sucrose | 120.0 | 11.39 |
| Dextrose | 40.0 | 3.8 |
| Lecithin | 3.0 | 0.28 |
| Egg yolk | 51.0 | 4.84 |
This gives me the following data.
- Butter fat 16.4%
- Total fat 17.7%
- MSNF 9%
- Total Solids 42.7%
- PAC 235
- POD 148
So, the Butter fat, total fat and MSNF are pretty ok but the Total solids, PAC and POD are still off.
Changing the sugars
The next step is to tweak the sugars to reach my goal PAC/POD values. The original recipe was low in both sweetness and freezing point depression so we need to modify the sugars. Remember the target was PAC 270-275 and POD 170. Here I use the balance tool in the software. I lock all other ingredients and set my target to PAC=270 and POD=170. This calculates to Sucrose=139.1g and Dextrose=54.6g and gives me exactly PAC=270 and POD=170. Here is the data.
- Butter fat 15.8%
- Total fat 17.2%
- MSNF 8.7%
- Total Solids 44.4%
- PAC 270
- POD 170
As you can see the other parameters changes as well because the total amount of sugars changes from 160g to 193.7g.
But good news, we are now close to the goal for almost all parameters.
Total solids
Ok, now we have a problem. The total solids are too high by 2.4%.
We could try to reduce the SMP (Skim milk powder). If we remove the SMP completely the total solids goes down to 42.3% but the MSNF drops to 5.4% so this is clearly not an option.
The solution is to introduce another sugar.
Adding fructose
To be able to reduce the total solids without changing the PAC, POD or MSNF we have to add another type of sugar. Fructose has the same freezing point depression as dextrose but it is almost twice as sweet as sugar. Fructose has PAC=190 and POD=170.
This will allow us to lower the total solids by reducing the sucrose content and replacing some of that sucrose with fructose to maintain the PAC and POD. The MSNF is not affected.
So, after some experimenting with the ratios of sucrose/dextrose/fructose we get the following recipe.
| Ingredient | Weight (g) | Amount (%) |
|---|---|---|
| Milk | 400.0 | 37.84 |
| Cream | 400.0 | 37.84 |
| Skim milk powder | 40.0 | 3.78 |
| Sucrose | 80.0 | 7.57 |
| Dextrose | 50.0 | 4.73 |
| Fructose | 33.0 | 3.12 |
| Lecithin | 3.0 | 0.28 |
| Egg yolk | 51.0 | 4.82 |
- Butter fat 16.3% (target 15-17)
- Total fat 17.6% (target 16-18)
- MSNF 9% (target 7-9)
- Total Solids 42.1% (target 42)
- PAC 274 (target 270-275)
- POD 169.7 (target 170)
Conclusion
Ok, we are pretty close to our target values. You can of course continue to tweak and make small changes if you like but I think this is close enough.
Hi how can you change / adjust PAC and POD in the software ? i can not find it
thanx
Michael
i think you need to update the documentation to include some working examples
You change all ingredient properties in the Edit Ingredient dialog.
https://icecreamcalc.com/knowledge-base/ingredient-dialog/
Hello Dear
is there a way to copy the same ingredients % for the same recipe and the software fills in the amounts in case I need to do a smaller batch for a test of the same recipe
for example :
A bigger batch has the volume of the following ingredients per gram:
water 80000 g – percentage X%
Milk Powder 5000 g – percentage y%
dextrose 3000 g – percentage v%
cream powder 3000 g – percentage z%
vanilla pod 200 g – percentage w%
so now I want to test the same ingredients keeping the same percentage but on a smaller batch
let’s say to make it easy
Water will be 8000 g
how I can copy the rest of the ingredients keeping the same percentage?
Thank you
You can just change the Total weight of the recipe and all percentages are the same.
If you want to set the Water to a spcecific weight keeping the percentages just change Weight mode to Scale and change the water.
I just wrote a post in the new Ice Cream Calc facebook group explaining everything about changing the weights of recipes and ingredients.