A friend and I just got into a discussion regarding Mr. Softie. I made the statement that I prefer real ice-cream and she said that soft serve was real ice-cream and it was just a different style. So, we decided to let Google find us the answer except…we couldn’t find anything definitive.
So, I ask the teeming millions, what exactly is soft-serve ice-cream? Is it actually an ice-milk as some websites allege? How does one make soft-serve ice-cream? Is it just normal ice-cream that isn’t frozen quite so much?
You mean the Mr Whippy stuff what is dispensed from a nozzle on a machine straight onto the cone? It’s ice cream - the recipe might not be the same as hard ice cream, but the key difference is that the machine whisks and aerates it as it dispenses - so the ice crystals are very small and uniform and the texture is different.
It’s ice milk. Ice cream must contain 10% milk fat by law, and the total fat in most soft-serve “ice cream” is only about 5%. This Wikipedia article has good information on the various frozen desserts.
It clearly not the same animal as regular ice cream. While soft serve gets melty, IME it stays basically solid at a much higher temperature than ice cream. Once the machine at McD’s was busted and I got a cone that tasted right but was cooled to just under room temperature. A very disconcerting sensation.
That Wikipedia article doesn’t conform to section 135.120 of 21 CFR ch. 1 - Ice Milk. That’s the Code of Federal Regulations. I have the 1994 edition, but I hadn’t thought they had changed that section.
Anyway ice milk has more than 2% but less than 7% milkfat and its content of total milk solids is not less than 11% i.e. the total of milkfat and nonfat milk solids must always be more than 11%: 2% milkfat must have 9% milk solids added, etc.
Technically this would mean that soft serve ice cream is a misnomer. It has to just be called soft serve.
It could be ice cream, ice milk, or non-dairy frozen dessert.
Like “real” ice cream (I’ll just call 'em all “ice cream”), soft-serve has air beat into it. You’ve got to beat air into ice cream, otherwise you just have mostly solid ice. Yuck! The air is what primarily contributes to the smoothness.
If you freeze the soft serve solid, it can become hard. Or maybe not. It all depends on the mix and the amount of air. “Real” ice cream, before hardening, can have the consistency of soft serve. Or maybe not. Again it depends on the mix and the amount of air.
McDonalds and other fast food places that break the rules can give you crappy milkshakes late at night. As the employees want to “pre-close” as much of the store as possible, they’ll do things like remove the shake mix from the machine. Why not? There’s enough in the machine to serve another 10 shakes! The problem is, you serve one shake, and the machine just beats the remaining mix in the chamber until it’s got more air in it. So the next time someone orders a shake, it has just ever so much more air. This serving, of course, causes even more air to be beat into the remaining mix. So if the pre-closers sell shakes against their expectations, you’re going to get a bad one!
Oh, the non-dairy frozen desert. I worked at a pizza place when I was in the Army (yeah, second income to support my strip club habit [wow, did I say that?]) – every order got free “ice cream,” which was made in a regular soft-serve ice cream machine, then frozen solid. But it wasn’t ice cream, it was non-dairy frozen desert. It came in big bags as a powder, which when mixed with filtered water from the soda fountain (non-gassed water), made “ice cream.” I told the owner he couldn’t call it “ice cream,” but he was a cheap old bastard and did it anyway. On the other hand, it was the best pizza in Killeen, and last time I was there it no longer existed (you can’t sell expensive pizza in a military town – refer to my second job reference again).
My friend’s ex-wife once owned an ice cream stand (until she started putting white powder up her nose, had an affair, filed for divorce and the stand went under during the mess.) Anyways I worked there part-part time one summer.
The soft serve was made by pouring the ice milk in the bottom of the machine it added the air while it mixed and you have ice cream. The mix only came in chocolate or vanilla. Any other flavor is made by mixing a powder into the vanilla.
Different %'s of milk fat is available. That’s why some tastes different from the place down the road. IIRC the cost of the ice cream in an average cone was about a nickle.
I’m going to try to repress the memory of four little league teams all showing up after their games at the same time. shudder Hoards of ankle biters all wanting their cone NOW.
One summer I worked for a dairy plant that made the mix. We used to drink the stuff. It came packaged in milk cartons, and was rather like a melted milkshake. I can’t remember any details about how it was made - I was mostly stuck packaging cottage cheese (out of the same vat into little cartons with about half a dozen different brand names on them). I CAN tell you that if it happened to spoil, it turned purple and smelled awful. We used to joke about “blueberry” mix.
I’m pretty sure that McDonald’s, mentioned above, has completely changed over to frozen yoghurt, though they’ve worked the recipe so that it seems like it’s ice cream.
I’m also pretty sure that most of the premade soft-serve mixes (whether they start out liquid or as a powder that water’s added to) have a considerable amount of some sort of emulsifier. Often it is a seaweed derivative called carageenan. This stuff is in most ice creams (it makes things feel smoother in the mouth), soft or otherwise, but I think there’s more of it in soft serve, and that’s the main difference.
I think that soft serves can have a large range of fat content, so one mix might qualify as ice cream, while another is only ice milk, and some don’t even have dairy in them.
Ice milk apparently is no longer defined separately in the regs. There is something called “Mellorine” which could include what used to be called ice milk.
They don’t mention any yogurt on their website, just ‘reduced fat ice cream’. Each 3.2oz serving has 3.5 grams total fat, so it is around 4% . I guess if you say ‘reduced fat’ you can call it ice cream.