Most consumers buy ice-cream on the basis of flavor and ingredients. While there are many flavors of ice-cream produced, vanilla accounts for 30% of consumption. This is partly because many products use this flavor as an ingredient; such as milkshakes, banana splits, pies, desserts, etc. It is the responsibility of the ice-cream maker to create an excellent mix by adding the ingredients in the right proportion. Ingredients are added to ice-cream in four ways during the process of manufacturing:

A. Mix tank: used for homogeneous distribution of flavor in the frozen ice-cream.

B. Variegating Pump: used for ribbons, swirls, ripples, revels.

C. Ingredient feeder: used for particulates such as nuts, cookies, fruits, etc.

D. Shaker table: used for large inclusions.

Generally, the mild flavor easily blends well and do not tend to become objectionable at high concentrations, while harsh flavor tend to create problems even in low concentration. Therefore, mild flavor are preferable to harsh flavor, but in any case a flavor should only be intense enough to be easily recognized. Flavoring materials may be:

A. Natural

B. Artificial or imitation

C. Blends of the two

There are two main flavors from which other varieties of ice-cream are derived.

VANILLA

Vanilla is the most popular flavor of ice-cream in the world. The dairy industry uses half of the total imported vanilla in North America. It is a very important ice-cream ingredient, not only in vanilla ice-cream, but in many other flavors where it is used as a flavor enhancer, e.g. chocolate is much improved by presence of vanilla. It comes from a plant belonging to orchid family called vanilla planifolia. There are several varieties of vanilla beans among which are Bourbon, Tahitian, and Mexican. Bourbon beans are used to produce the best vanilla extracts. Vanilla flavor are available in liquid form as well as the following forms:

• Natural vanilla

• Natural and artificial (reinforced vanilla with vanillin)

• Artificial vanilla (vanillin)

A good vanilla enhances the flavor of any flavor of ice-cream in addition to good dairy products.

CHOCOLATE AND COCOA

Cocoa is derived from a bean which is a fruit of the tree theobroma cacao, which grows in tropical regions. The beans are embedded in pods on the tree, 20-30 beans per pod. When ripe, the pods are cut from the trees, and after drying, the beans are removed from the pods and allowed to ferment for about 10 days (microbiological and enzymatic fermentation). The beans are then washed, dried, sorted, graded and shipped. The beans are then processed under different conditions to get the chocolate that is needed. There are dark chocolates, milk chocolates, white chocolates, and imitation chocolates. A good chocolate ice-cream will be made if the cocoa or chocolate liquor is added to the vat and then homogenized with the rest of the mixture.

Apart from these two main flavors, there are fruit flavored ice-creams, which sometimes include fruits itself. Whatever flavor it is, ice-cream is an all time favorite of people around the world.