Questions & Answers
from "On Ice Cream" featured in Dairy Foods magazine
and sourced from "On Ice Cream" technical short courses.

Ice Cream Sweetness:

Question: How sweet should ice cream be? Can it be measured?

Answer: Sweetness depends on mix specifics (including how the mix is to be used), flavor(s) to be executed, the sweetener system(s) available, and conditions of consumption. Most ice creams will try to achieve the equivalence of 13-17% sucrose. Chocolate ice creams normally require higher sweetness levels to offset the harshness of the cocoas used. Fruit flavors may require more or less sweetness to more appropriately deliver flavor quality. Additionally, products such as fat modified ice creams, sherbert, sorbet, and water ices, have their own sweetness (and sweetener) concerns and objectives. Sweetness can be achieved by using blends of a variety of sweeteners (e.g., sucrose, HFCS, regular corn syrup) to achieve similar "theoretical" sweetness to a 100% sucrose formula. It provides a simple means of measuring the sweetness differences between mixes. "Theoretical" sweetness is calculated by taking the theoretical sweetness (in ice cream) of an individual sweetener relative to sucrose (typically given a value of "1") and multiplying this by the use rate in the mix. The sum of all such calculations for all sweeteners used is the "theoretical" sweetness of the mix. When comparing "theoretical" sweetness between mixes to be used for the same purpose, values that exceed +/-0.5 "theoretical" sweetness should be considered different and measures taken to modify the amount or type of sweetener(s) to more closely compare your sweetness objective.