UW-Madison researcher develops ice cream that doesn't melt (2024)

Two molds of ice cream sat atop metal mesh balanced over beakers in a warm Babco*ck Hall lab on Monday, an endurance test perfectly suited for the day's stifling heat.

The question: Which one would hold its shape the longest, and which one would drip through the wires into milkshake form?

In the UW-Madison basem*nt-level lab, the answer was largely predestined. One scoop was regular ice cream, not unlike what visitors could buy upstairs at the Babco*ck Dairy store. The other was a concoction of UW-Madison Ph.D. researcher Cameron Wicks, in which an addition of polyphenols — compounds naturally occurring in plants such as blueberries and green tea leaves — helps ice cream keep its shape by counteracting melting ice crystals.

The more polyphenols infused in the ice cream, the better it resisted melting and held its shape for hours.

"It's basically physics and ice cream coming together," Wicks said.

Monday was an apt day to test: Outside, the heat index in Madison was 96 degrees, the hottest day of the year so far. It's expected the hot weather will last for the next few days, with dew points in the 70s. Dew points above 65 degrees are considered muggy.

The temperature inside the lab was in the mid-70s, and after more than two hours, all that was left of the regular vanilla ice cream was a slight coating on the mesh. The entire scoop had dripped into the beaker below after losing all of its definition from the mold.

The polyphenol-added ice cream — flavored like green tea with a tartness so strong it's like cranberries on steroids — had started to drip through the wires, but for the most part, had held its shape.

Wick's green tea ice cream has higher levels of polyphenols in it and therefore keeps its shape better than her deep, rich purple blueberry ice cream, which wasn't included in the melt test. Within minutes of mixing it up in a commercial-grade ice cream maker as part of a separate demonstration, though, the blueberry ice cream was holding its shape in the small paper cups Wicks scooped it into.

Consumers might not be drawn to the idea of a no-melt ice cream that can sit at room temperature for hours. But Wicks, a Dallas, Texas, native who's been working with the ice cream for six years through the duration of her Ph.D. program, said it's an area ripe for research.

Wicks isn't the first to make a no-melt ice cream. A company in Japan achieved it first and previous research has shown that polyphenols can slow the melting rate. But the "why" behind it remained a mystery, which prompted Wicks to find out how exactly polyphenols help ice cream make fat "clusters" that thicken the ice cream.

Adding polyphenols could improve the overall quality of ice cream by reducing freezer burn — caused by the formation of large ice crystals — on your fresh tub of ice cream or allowing it to be better transported in warmer climates, Wicks explained.

"Consumers might not want ice cream that hangs out for four hours. So, there's wiggle room with how much (polyphenols) we add," she said. "It's a great foundation. No one else knew why this was happening. And now we finally have a hypothesis and now the whole scientific process can happen where people can agree, refute, add on."