Massey University’s Prof Jon Palmer, right, from the School of Food Technology and Natural Sciences, presents pink ice cream to Year 5 and Year 6 Linton Camp School children, pictured from left, Elliot Hercoe, Arlia McGahey, and Nikolai Brown, to taste and guess the flavour. Hint: it’s not related to the colour.
Magical milk amazes school children
4 July 2024 - Freeze-dried ice cream can be taken anywhere, even on a space ship. And pink ice cream may not taste how you expect.
These were some of the discoveries made by a group of Linton Camp School children aged 7-10 last week.The children from the school’s Māori immersion unit were visiting Massey University on Tuesday to participate in some milky experiments with the Riddet Institute.
An ice cream tasting experiment considered how much flavour expectations are related to what we see. Workshop presenter Associate Professor Jon Palmer and Associate Professor Nicola Brown from Massey University’s School of Food Technology and Natural Sciences asked the first group of children what they thought was the flavour of some pink ice cream. They were instructed to take the lid off the individual pottles of ice cream and smell them first, then taste.
“It tastes like bubblegum,” says Anastasia. Others were not so sure.
“If you close your eyes, what do you taste?” asked Prof Palmer.
The children, aged between 7 and 10, debated the flavour. Is it Candy flavoured? Strawberry? Lime?
“What you see has a huge role in what we taste,” Prof Palmer says.
Later in the morning another group of Linton Camp School children quickly guessed the flavour: banana.
The next sample was a minty pastel green, the colour again unrelated to the ice cream’s flavour.
“This one is challenging,” warns Prof Palmer. “Does closing your eyes change how you taste the green one?”
The children call out their guesses:
“It smells like vanilla.”
“Cookies and Cream?”
“Orange and Lime?”
“It tastes like lime first and then orange when you swallow,” says Nikolai, who may have a future career in food tasting. Orange was correct.
Linton Camp School student Oriana Tanoa’i, centre, watches Dr Mahya Tavan separate the milk curds from the liquid, along with Kyla Rangitakatu, left, and Athena Tanginoa (obscured). The curds are then molded into shapes and dry as hard as plastic.
Dr Mahya Tavan separates the curds from the liquid.
Above, Athena Tanginoa, left, and Oriana Tanoa’i squeeze the curds to put into molds to make shapes. Right, milk plastic! The molds and shapes made from milk.
Next the children tasted freeze-dried ice cream, also known as ‘ice cream for astronauts’ (and tasting a bit like milk biscuits).
“This is all part of food technology, and developing and making food,” Prof Palmer says.
He explains the ice cream shrinks to half its original volume with its water content removed and no longer requires freezing or even refrigerating. It will not melt. Instead, stored in vacuum packs, it can last for months, as long as it is not exposed to the sun.
“Bite it and it will go back to being creamy.”
Prof Brown says freeze-dried ice cream could go to the moon with astronauts, but also had practical uses down on earth. It could be taken tramping or used as a snack for extreme sportspeople as it contained nutritious protein and fats.
A second experiment was not tasting milk products but making plastic from them. Three Riddet Institute Postdoctoral Fellows, Dr Thomas Do, Dr Mahya Tavan, and Dr Faith Descallar, and Riddet Institute PhD student Patricia Soh, led the ‘milk plastic’ mini workshops with three groups of school students.
The amazing qualities of the casein component of milk were revealed once regular milk was warmed and curdled by the addition of vinegar. The curds solidify and can be molded into shapes that later set hard as plastic.
Linton Camp School teacher Kayla Cousins says the tamariki had an amazing time at the visit and soaked up the science learning.
“I forsee a lot of milky plastic being made at home in the future.”
Bite-sized bits of freeze-dried ice cream, otherwise known as ice cream for astronauts.
