In case you didn’t know the current world record for the world’s fastest ice cream is 10.34 seconds! To obtain the record you have to make one liter of ice cream from milk, sugar and flavoring (no eggs). Liquid nitrogen is used to rapidly cool and freeze the ice cream mixture. The current record was achieved by Andrew Ross (UK) at Cliffe Cottage in Sheffield,​ South Yorkshire,​ UK, on 6 June 2010. Prior to that the world record belonged to Peter Barham who in 2005 shaved two seconds of his previous record, ending at 18.78 seconds. To conclude his presentation on how food can be used to make students interested in physics and chemistry Peter decided to beat the current world record. Here’s a video of how it went:

Want to read more about the history of liquid nitrogen ice cream and find recipes? Then you should visit the webpages of The institute for liquid nitrogen ice cream experimental studies!

Just a small reminder that the deadline for the current round of TGRWT #17 is a little later than usual: May 8th. I took the picture above for last month’s TGRWT (where it was combined with chicken) and came to think that it actually qualifies for this month’s TGRWT as well. It’s rose foam on a spoon with apple, celery and almonds, and the foam is sprinkled with a little pepper.

As an experiment I tried to freeze the leftover rose foam and was quite surprised by the resulting texture. It was easy to scoop due to the incorporated air and had a nice mouth feel. There were no ice crystals and the texture was almost a little chewy. What would one call this? Ice cream? Sorbet? No – there is no cream and the texture is much lighter. Frozen sorbet? Foamed sorbet? Frozen foam? Any suggestions? I think I’ll make a variation of the frozen foam for TGRWT #17

Frozen rose foam

Frozen rose foam is easily scooped due to all the air bubbles

I recently became aware of an excellent site focusing solely on liquid nitrogen ice cream! Ever heard about “The institute for liquid nitrogen ice cream experimental studies” or TILNICES for short? They’re located at the Department of Chemistry at the Tennessee Technological University. It seems that the site is still under construction, but several recipes are already available plus a number of papers (available for download as pdf files).

[Thanks to John Placko on the MG mailing list for mentioning the site]

Methyl cellulose is made from cellulose. Methyl celluloses are available with varying degrees of methyl substitution. Typically 40-90% of the hydroxy groups are methylated. Often the degree of substitution (DS) is given as the average number of hydroxy groups that have been methylated per anhydroglucose unit, so the maximum DS is 3. The solubility in water decreases with increasing methyl substitution. One interesting property of methyl cellulose is the fact that it dissolves readily in cold water, but solidifies when you heat it (such gels are often referred to as thermoreversible). Using this property it is possible to make a hot “ice cream” that melts as it cools down. Does this sound weird? Here’s a recipe from Ideas in food so you can try it at home:

Hot Vanilla Ice Cream
306 g whole milk yogurt
230 g cream cheese
80 g agave nectar
154 g water
1 Bourbon vanilla bean scraped
pinch of sea salt
11.55g Methocel food gum (SGA150)

In a blender puree together the yogurt, cream cheese, agave nectar, the insides of the vanilla bean and the salt. Blend just until the mixture comes together as a smooth puree, but do not aerate. Meanwhile, heat the water up to a boil. As soon as the water boils remove from the heat and whisk in the Methocel. Once the Methocel is dispersed, add it to the blender and puree the contents until the mixture is homogenized, again avoid aeration.

Once the mixture is combined, pour it into a bowl over an ice bath to chill. Let the ice-cold mixture rest for at least an hour, preferably overnight before poaching the ice cream.

When ready to make the ice cream, heat a pot of water to a boil. When the water boils, shut off the heat and scoop the ice cream base. As you scoop, wipe the edges of the ice cream scoop, and then immerse the scoop and its contents into the hot water. You will see the ice cream set, and then dislodge it from the scoop. The ice cream should poach for about one minute for small scoops and longer for larger scoops. (Depending on how much ice cream you are poaching you may have to turn the heat back on to keep the water hot.)

Once the ice cream is set, remove the scoops, drain briefly on a paper towel and place into serving dishes with whatever garnishes you want. As the mixture chills the ice cream will “melt” in your dish, blending with the garnishes like and actual cold ice cream sundae.

First challenge is to get hold of methyl cellulose (also known as Methocel which is the trademark owned by Dow – BTW, they have very informative pages on food grade methyl cellulose). From Dow’s pages, it seems the SGA in the name refers to “METHOCEL Super Gelling A-Type Food Gums”. Methocell A has a DS = 1.8 and a 2% solution of this methyl cellulose sets at 50-55 °C, forming a firm gel. For a overview of Dow’s full range, check out this pdf. Click here for information about where to buy methocel (most likely in larger quantities).

For small quantities of methyl cellulose you can check out Will Goldfarb’s site (unfortunately, there’s no information about which type of methyl cellulose this is Update: It’s Dow’s F50 – a semi-firm gel forms at 62-68 °C). The Texturas series by elBulli includes Metil (with a methyl cellulose base, whatever that means), but again, I haven’t been able to find any information as to what kind of methyl cellulose this is (they do mention a gelling temperature in the range 40-60 °C however).

I’ll be happy to include further links to suppliers of methyl cellulose (and other hydrocolloids) both here and on my suppliers page if you know about any!

For those really interested, Ideas in food have several other recipes requiring methyl cellulose: hot mozarella sheets, hummus gnocchi and caramellized yoghurt gnocchi.