Estimation of rheological properties of ice cream unfrozen liquid phase by FT-NIR spectroscopy

The control of ice cream powder mixture production is carried out evaluating the ice cream liquid phase. The present study was conduced on ice cream and unfrozen liquid phase in order to indirectly evaluate the rheological properties by measuring the powder mixture. The calibration set was formed by samples with different percentage of thickeners, maintaining constant the concentration of the other remaining compounds. After the NIR acquisitions the powders were mixed with warm milk, blended and than settled in order to obtain the unfrozen liquid phase needed for the rheological measurements. For each recipe three batches were prepared. The flow curves were evaluated by using the Ostwald de Waele’s equation and the goodness of fit was evaluated by the R2, which was above 0.95. Predictive models of rheological parameters were set up by means of PLS regressions in order to predict the consistency coefficient (K) and the flow behavior index (n) from spectral acquisitions. High correlation of calibration was found for both parameters and NIR spectra obtaining R2 of 0.884 for K and 0.874 for n. The good prediction of the models encourages applying them to reduce significantly the time of the powder mixing control during production.