Thaleb or Soft Base?? Which one is better???

Ice cream is a very popular treat among people around the world. Therefore, the number of those involved in producing and selling this delicious dessert is relatively higher than in many other professions. From past to present, various methods and machines have been used to make ice cream. However, the main point is that the most popular ones among people often use the same basic ingredients. The base of making ice cream consists of milk, sugar, stabilizers (soft base, salep, etc.), vanilla, eggs, and more, each playing a different role in creating a tasty ice cream.

Characteristics of an ice cream with Soft Base

• Delicious taste
• Balanced and adequate sweetness
• Light and voluminous texture
• Having a creamy and silky mouthfeel
• Without large ice crystals inside the ice cream

In order to have all these features in our ice cream, we need a stabilizer. Most ice cream makers traditionally use salep as a stabilizer for producing cone ice cream. However, with the substitution of Soft Base, salep has gradually been eliminated from ice cream ingredients.

What is Salep?

For ice cream production, which one would you choose: Salep or Soft Base?

The salep plant has a structure similar to orchids. 25 different species have been suggested for the structure of the salep plant.

However, in Iran, ten types of it exist. The regions where the salep plant can be found are:

• Kurdistan
• Azerbaijan
• Regions around the Caspian Sea

The salep plant grows significantly in the above-mentioned regions as a wild plant.

In the structure of the salep plant, one should not overlook its beautiful clustered flowers.

The beautiful flowers of the salep plant come in three colors: pink, white, and purple.

One of the important features of the salep plant is its thickening property. Its use in ice cream structure is very effective for the consistency of its texture.

Comparison of Salep and Soft Base in making ice cream

Taste: Salep has a neutral taste and does not add any flavor to the ice cream; it is only used for texture. However, Soft Base, as a stabilizer, plays an important role in creating balance between the different flavors of ice cream.

Light and voluminous texture: Salep makes the ice cream very heavy. Sometimes it has happened that you could not finish an ice cream, and this is due to its heaviness. Soft Base, on the other hand, gives the ice cream a voluminous and fluffy texture.

In a sample we tested in the laboratory, we compared two ice cream mixtures — one made with salep and the other with Soft Base — side by side, and filled several cones with a height of 15 cm from each mixture. Note that the height of all cones was exactly the same.

The cones made with the salep mixture weighed between 150 to 160 grams, while the cones made with the Soft Base mixture weighed between 100 to 110 grams.

And our calculations show that from 13 kg of ice cream mixture, about 20 to 25 more cones can be obtained compared to the salep-based mixture.

Creaminess of the ice cream: The stabilizer removes large air bubbles, which gives the ice cream a creamy texture and creates an excellent mouthfeel — a property that salep lacks.

The role of the stabilizer in ice crystal formation during storage is minimal.

However, other studies in this field indicate that the initial size of ice crystals, compared to ice cream produced with stabilizers, is smaller in structure.