Showing posts with label artificial flavouring. Show all posts
Showing posts with label artificial flavouring. Show all posts

Aug 17, 2009

Why make ice cream with egg yolk?


The ice cream that I make at home incorporates egg yolks into the recipe. It involves making an ice cream custard base that requires cooking.

I feel that ice cream made this way creates a cherished and much more flavourful taste and texture that can hardly be rivaled.

Ice cream made using egg yolks is known as French-style ice cream. This method was widely adopted before the widespread industrialisation of ice cream-making (that started some time in the 1970s in the U.S.) that saw the mass production of ice cream from pre-mixes. Mass production usually involves the use of stabilisers, emulsifiers, preservatives and artificial flavouring. (You can easily verify this fact by dropping by your friendly neighbourhood supermarket and reading the ingredients list on commercially produced pint of ice cream.)

The fact is, ice cream made from egg yolks are much more costly and cracking eggs for the yolk is not exactly the most efficient or economical method to make large batches of ice cream.

Without a doubt, ice cream made without egg yolks are widely available these days.

Which is why you find yourself paying a premium for ice cream made with eggs! (I know for a fact that Ben & Jerry's and Haagen Daz makes use of pastuerised egg yolks for their ice cream recipes. Well, at least I know for a fact that they do so here in Singapore.)

Egg yolk is an emulsifier. Find out about emulsifiers here. If you've heard about stabilisers and don't know what they are, read about them here.