Inhibiting ice recrystallization in ice cream with corn cob hemicelluloses

Ice cream’s main shelf-life defect is ice recrystallization. This refers to the growth of larger ice crystals at the expense of smaller ones, which are currently stabilized mainly by polysaccharide gums. These gums work decently but have become increasingly expensive over the years. Using the sucrose sandwich assay, corn cob hemicelluloses’ and holocellulose nanocrystals’ ice recrystallization inhibition (IRI) activity was investigated using the sucrose sandwich assay. Although holocellulose nanocrystals (holoCNCs) did not exhibit activity, 0.5% w/w hemicelluloses (hemiCs) were able to inhibit ice recrystallization by 67.70 ± 1.09% in a model ice cream system after 7 days and were active at concentrations as low as 0.1% w/w. In a commercial ice cream mix 0.5% w/w hemiCs inhibited ice recrystallization by 51.75± 0.40% after 7 days, performing better than two common commercial stabilizers—guar gum and locust bean gum (LBG). Some preliminary physicochemical experiments were conducted to ensure that hemiCs were a practical stabilizer that could actually be added to ice cream without any major defects.