1 hour ago, paulraphael said:
One thing I'd assume about starches is that they're all different. Refined starches are fairly common stabilizer ingredient. Cornstarch has been used forever, tapioca starch is getting more popular. My guess is that something like sweet potatoes would indeed contribute some starchy thickening. But exactly how much and what the properties are would take a bunch of experimenting. It would probably depend on the variety of sweet potato, how it was cooked, and who knows what else. You'd probably just have to be comfortable with some unpredictability in your textures.
In some cases with commercial ice creams you can learn a lot from the labels. Ben & Jerries isn't especially high-tech (as far as I know). It's basically a New England style ice cream, and all the relevant info is on the label. They use eggs, high solids, and a stabilizer blend with a lot of guar, to get that dense and chewy thing. Other companies (like Haagen Dazs) use technology in ways that are hidden from the label. I believe they do sophisticated cooking steps to turn the milk proteins into stabilizers. Essentially they're using proprietary molecular science to make the label suggest that grandma churned it at home. I'd love to know more about the process, but they're not talking about it.
BTW I didn't think you were being arrogant at all. It's not clear to everyone what's involved in that kind of testing. It's also not clear from my blog that I'm just a guy who makes ice cream a couple of pints at a time ... and who these days eat most of it without help.
Thanks Paul. I was excited to join the 2021 penn state cohort but I guess that needs to wait until 2022 the earliest. I wanted to learn some more science and I heard the penn state has a great program on theoreticals that discuss characteristics and ingredients and their interrelations
