Applied Chemistry is Edible

Saybrook had a "Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream Social," where we had ice cream that was prepared using liquid nitrogen to rapidly cool it down. They had some interesting flavors. There was the more conventional types like Oreo, blueberry/lemon, cinnamon/sprinkles, and there were a apparently few that were less conventional like Cheetos and salad dressing.

I thankfully managed to avoid the Cheetos tub, but I inadvertently got a scoop of the salad dressing, which was, aside from the scent of ranch (which I associate with either ranch or Elmer's Glue), wasn't really that bad. It in fact tasted like cream cheese.

I'm guessing the logic behind using liquid nitrogen to cool it down is that the cooling process would be more rapid and that the ice cream ends up becoming smoother because the water has less of a chance to form ice crystals. This reminds me of my friend's summer research project for STARS on the formability of bulk metallic glasses, which are a kind of amorphous metal, which is different from the metal we're used to because the molecules are not in crystalline structures. In his presentation during the STARS Symposium, he described how in order for amorphous metals to be made, they have to be cooled rapidly so that the atoms do not have the chance to form into crystals. In any case, the ice cream was undoubtedly quite creamy. Now I can add another flavor to my list of unusual ice cream flavors that I've tried, though I will still need to decide whether salad dressing-flavored tops garlic.

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