Product Testing: The Chemistry of Ice Cream

This monograph deals with one of the basic areas of industrial chemistry, testing for quality control of both raw materials and finished product. Although the chemical engineer may bear overall responsibility for the industrial process, responsibility for most of the actual testing lies with the laboratory technicians and other food scientists, who become key players in determining the final quality of a product by their conscientious quality-control testing. This monograph focuses on both ice cream production and the role testing plays in the production of a safe and delicious product. This monograph is divided into six major sections: an Introduction to the Ice Cream Industry (content review for teachers) and five content sections for students, which include background readings, overheads, and laboratory activities. The laboratory activities are designed to be done in pairs by students within a 50-minute laboratory period, which is a typical format for most high schools. The last of the five student sections is a series of take-home research activities in which a problem is posed and students design their own testing protocols to investigate the problem.