Many commercial ice creams include a number of additives–those hard-to-pronounce mystery ingredients on the ingredients list.
There’s all sort of uses: there are stabilizers to keep water from migrating and ice crystals from growing, thickeners to adjust the texture and make the ice cream more scoopable, additives to keep air bubbles from collapsing and to adjust how hard the ice cream is at various temperatures, additives to adjust the butter fat content, or to reduce costs, preservatives to provide longer shelf life, colors, etc.
Some typical additives include guar gum, xanthan gum, carrageenan, whey protein, propylene glycol monoesters, cellulose gel, mono- and diglycerides, locust bean gum, carob bean, polysorbate, tapioca starch, high fructose corn syrup, tara gum, soy lecithin, etc.
Most of these are not needed in homemade ice cream since you don’t have to transport it long distances, keep it on shelves for months, etc.
Our Ice Cream Base Mix has only five ingredients–milk, eggs, sugar, salt, cream.
