Rheology of Commercial and Model Ice Creams

The rheologies of a shear-frozen commercial ice cream and of a model ice cream foam have been studied at − 5ºC and other temperatures by capillary rheometry on a commercial manufacturing line and in a Multi-Pass Rheometer, respectively. Both were 50 vol% aerated emulsions of milk fat in an aqueous sucrose solution, but the model ice cream foam was without ice crystals. The data indicate significant wall slip effects which have been analysed using the classical Mooney method, the Jastrzebski variant and one based on Tikhonov regularization. The latter approach yields ‘most convincing results’, including a previously unreported region of shear thickening at very high shear rates of ~ 3000 s-1 for the model ice cream foam, when the capillary number indicates a possible transition in the flow around bubbles from domination by interfacial effects to viscous effects. Viscous heating effects were observed at relatively low shear rates for the commercial ice cream, but not the model ice cream foam. This was attributed to the melting of the ice crystal phase in the commercial ice cream, and, hence, absent from the model ice cream foam.