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Special thanks go to Robert Kneschke from the Eis machen-Blog for his sound expert advice and valuable recommendations on the UI.
Also Eckes contribution to the browser compatibility deserve to be credited.
What is the meaning of the beta status?
This tool is not yet in a final state, so you should be aware of two things.
What do I have to consider when creating a recipe?
Actually not much, just set the desired target type, serving temperature and hardness to configure the target parameters. Then add the ingredients in their required amounts and adjust the mixture according to your wishes. There is only one caveat. Only account ingredients that are actually soluted in the mixture, as only they contribute to the mixtures properties. So for example if you are going to add some chocolate chips to your ice cream you should exclude them from the calculation.
The calculation results I get seem to be odd or differ from the results I get using another tool. What should I do?
This is most likely caused by some erroneous ingredient data. The best way to address this is to trace back the ingredients that are affecting the wrong result values most and double check the data stored for them in the ingredients list.
How should the optimization feature be used?
You need to be aware that the optimization algorithm can only aim for the technical parameters, but does not know anything about taste. In some cases this can mean it could choose to add lots of salt to decrease the freezing point or to remove any stabilizers as it is not aware of their contribution to the texture. So the best way to use the automatic optimization is to use the optimization to get an idea of the proportions of ingredients needed to fulfill the technical requirements and use this as a basis to tweak the parameters the algorithm missed.
The optimization comes in two flavors:
What is the meaning of the error value?
The internal calculation is not done for a target value but for a valid range for each value, but all this numbers are hidden from the UI for the sake of simplicity. The error value describes how much the current mixture fails to met the desired range. For example if the target value should be between 90 and 110, this would be a range of 20. If the current value then is 120, meaning it is 10 off the target range, the error value would be 50% (10/20). This approach ensures that the error for missing a large range a little is smaller than missing a small range by the same amount.
What are all these abbreviations about?
PAC stands for potere anticongelante. It describes the freezing point depression relative to the one of sucrose, which has the value of 100. It is also known as (relative) freezing point depression factor or anti-freezing power.
POD means potere edulcorante and is used to measure the sweetness in relation to sucrose, which is again defined as a value of 100. This value is also known as relative sweetness, sweetening power or sucrose equivalent (SE).
MSNF abbreviates the term milk-solids non-fat and describes the stuff that remains when removing water and fat from dairy products. For ice cream making the lactose and salt contents are the fractions of primary interest in MSNF.
I created a recipe with custom ingredients and would like to share it with someone else. Do I have to pass on my inredients collection as well?
No, this is not required. All ingredients used are stored as a backup in the recipe file and automatically imported on loading. When the ingredients are already present their values are compared to ensure the calculation relies on the data matching the ingredients acually used for the mixture.
What do I have to take care of when I add ingredients?
The field Solids describes the total solids, including the MSNF part. So basically everything except water and alcohol needs to be considered here.
PAC includes all anti-freezing effects of an ingredient created by sugars, salt or alcohol, with one exception: the salt contained in the MSNF of dairy products is calculated separately for reasons of the algorithm and therefore should not be included in the PAC value.
When importing ingredient data from the FoodData Central database do not forget to complete the missing data. Although Ice Ed is able to load the complete attributes of an ingredient, most records lack some data fields, so you will have to add them manually.
As a last step for creating new ingredients it is recommended to do a sanity check by comparing their values with those of one or two similar items to track any obvious deviations.
How can I keep my added ingredients best?
You can either use the import/export buttons or you can use the Download link to create a local copy of the tool containing the ingredients list with all current changes.
Why can´t I use this tool for commercial purposes?
I made this tool for a target audience of hobbyists and enthusiasts that love making ice cream but do not make a living out of it. In general I would not mind the tool being used by professional gelatieri as well. But please be aware that the development did not only cost me a good amount of time, but also required me to spend some money for research and testing. So before allowing others to earn money with this tool I would like at least to reimburse my expenses. As soon as I break even I will happily alter the license to a more permissive model (Probably it's going to be GPLv3 or MIT license.) and also might consider adding some features for professional use like price per scoop calculation or batch planning.
Which upcoming features are currently planned?
There are some…
Will there be any translations available, soon?
Currently this has no priority for development. However, if there should be a merge request of reasonable quality I surely will not reject it.
If you would like to support the development and maintenance of Ice Ed with a donation please use this button.
© 2020 J. Müller
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