Module 5: Taste

An ice cream is a tasty treat. But if you ate it for breakfast, lunch and dinner, your body wouldn’t be very happy.

Put up the nutrition poster and have a class kōrero about the building blocks of a balanced diet.

Making nutritious, delicious

One part of a food scientist’s job is to figure out how to make food nutritious, but keep it delicious!

Fortification

For example, they might do something called fortification. Fortification is when extra nutrients are added to food to make it more nutritious.

At Fonterra, food scientists fortify their milk by adding vitamins and minerals that help keep your bones strong – like vitamin D and calcium.

Smart swaps

Sometimes, you can also swap less healthy ingredients for healthier alternatives that have similar performance properties.

For example, you could swap sugar for dates, or add nuts instead of cookies.

Can you think of any other smart ingredient swaps?

E hoa mā, it’s almost time to plan what flavours you’ll add into your ultimate ice cream. But before you do this, is there any way you could improve your base recipe?

Condensed milk

Remember the elements that impact creaminess and scoopability?

Alongside air, a good ice cream base has fat, sugar, and small, even ice crystals. We’d like to introduce you to an ingredient that has these things covered.

Condensed milk! It helps make ice cream yum because:

• It contains fat and proteins that trap air bubbles and keep ice crystals small
• It has built-in sugar which impacts its freezing point depression
• It has most of its water removed so there’s less water to form ice crystals

Elevated extras

Is there anything else you can think of to improve your ice cream base?

What about making a nutritious swap? Or adding something else to make it creamy, scoopable and yum?

When it comes to ice cream, flavour is the cherry on top. Flavour is what takes your base ice cream recipe to the next level.

Sometimes, two flavours are even better than one. Food scientists use science and creativity to combine ingredients that create memorable eating experiences.

Some ice cream pairings include:

Why do they work?

Some flavours are like besties. They go well together because:

• They share smell molecules: chocolate and peanut butter both have warm nutty smells so your nose thinks they’re a match.
• Opposites attract: the different flavours in sweet and salty popcorn are what makes it exciting.
• They help each other shine: just like salt makes food taste better, a squeeze of lemon can make berries taste even juicier.

Choose your flavour

So how will you choose your ice cream flavour?

Are there any flavours you have good memories of? What about flavours from your culture or where you grew up? Get creative and choose your own cool flavour combos!

Throughout your ice cream journey, you’ve discovered how ice, fat, sugar, air and flavour make ice cream creamy, scoopable and yum.

Now it’s your time to use all of this knowledge to plan your final ice cream creation.

Mīharo. Today you:

• Explored the elements of nutrition
• Decided on your final base recipe
• Discovered flavour pairings
• Planned your ultimate ice cream