If you have been making ice cream for a while, you are probably familiar with AFP (Anti-Freezing Power) and Total Solids. Balancing these parameters is the critical first step in making good ice cream.
Yet, sometimes classical math is not enough. Have you ever had to create a perfectly balanced recipe on paper, but once you put it in your home freezer it becomes a block of marble? Or make a delicious fiordilatte that, after a week of storage, develops an annoying “sandy” texture on the palate?
This happens because ice cream is a living, dynamic matter. The classic AFP gives you a fixed value, but it does not tell you exactly how your mixture will react when the temperature drops to -12°C, -14°C or -18°C.
To make the ultimate leap, professionals and advanced geeks use balancing tools that contain very useful predictive models such as the Freezing Curve or the Dynamic Sandiness Index.
Let’s see what they are and how you can use them to your advantage with the Gold version of BilanciaLi.
The freezing curve: the secret to perfect spreadability
Pure water freezes at 0°C, becoming 100 percent ice. In ice cream, however, there are sugars that act as an “antifreeze,” lowering the freezing point. As the temperature drops in your freezer, the water does not freeze all at once, but does so gradually.
The Freezing Curve is simply a map that shows you, degree by degree, what percentage of free water has turned to ice and how much has remained liquid.
The 75% Golden Rule Scientific studies on ice cream tell us that the perfect texture, the wonderfully scoopable and creamy texture, is achieved when about 75% of the total water in the mixture is turned into ice.
- If there is only 60% ice, the ice cream will be too soft (a soup).
- If there is 85% or 90% ice, the ice cream will be hard as a rock.
Practical example
Imagine you have created a hazelnut ice cream for your storefront, working around -12°C.
On paper the recipe looks balanced. Sugars are within range, fats pure, total solids don’t seem odd. You make the ice cream, put it in the display case, and after a few hours you realize it’s too firm. It scoops badly, it resists, it doesn’t have that creaminess you expect.
Here the freezing curve becomes much more useful than a simple AFP value.
Open the curve and check what happens at the actual temperature of your display case. At -12°C you discover that the recipe has, for example, 82% frozen water.
Here’s the problem: It’s not “wrong” at all, it’s unbalanced with respect to the temperature at which you want to serve it.
At that point you don’t have to go by trial and error or add sugar at random. You have to shift the curve in a controlled way, until you get closer to 75% frozen water at actual serving temperature.
You can do this by working on the sugar profile, for example by replacing some of the sucrose with higher AFP sugars, such as dextrose or glucose. You can also revise some solids, the amount of milk powder, the presence of fatty pastes or ingredients that stiffen the structure.
The point is that you are no longer correcting “by feel.” You’re looking at how the recipe actually moves.
If after the change, at -12°C, the curve shows you a value close to 75 percent, you have a recipe that is more consistent with your showcase. Not because you have increased the sugars until everything is soft, but because you have adapted the structure to the serving temperature.
The Optimal Quenelle Point (OQP)
Those who work with Pacojet or plated dessert preparations know very well that the problem is not just pacotize well. The problem is serving well.
You can have a technically perfect preparation, but if the pacotized mix is kept too cold, the quenelle will be difficult to make. If it is kept too warm, the ice cream will lose texture, gloss, and stability in the dish.
Within the freezing curve, BilanciaLi Gold gives you a second indication: the OQP, which is the temperature at which your mixture will have perfect quenelle consistency. Typically this is a point slightly “warmer” than the serving temperature, at which there is a tiny bit more unfrozen free water.
If BilanciaLi indicates to you that that recipe has an optimal quenelle point at -11°C, you can better organize the serving. For example, you can keep the already pacotized glasses at a slightly lower temperature, perhaps -12°C or -13°C, considering freezer openings, kitchen steps, downtime, and temperature changes.
Less calculation, more creativity
The mathematics governing nonlinear cryoscopic lowering, concentration regression, and residual water extrapolation is incredibly complex. Calculating these dynamics by hand requires advanced chemistry-physics formulas for each individual degree of temperature.
But the good news is that you don’t have to calculate any of this.
Advanced functions such as the Freezing Curve, Dynamic Sandiness Index, or OQP are designed precisely to work behind the scenes in instruments like BilanciaLi Gold. You enter ingredients, type in the temperature of your freezer, and the software instantly translates dozens of equations into practical answers: Will it be soft enough? Will it become sandy? How long will it last in the window?
Stop wasting ingredients by going trial and error. Use dynamic data to figure out in advance how your ice cream will perform and take it to a truly professional level!
Below you can see a demo of these functions in version 3.0 of BilanciaLi Gold (it’s in italian but you can enable English Sub-titles)
- How to predict the behavior of your ice cream with the Freezing Curve - 15 May 2026
- BilanciaLi 3.0: ice cream balancing, done better - 2 May 2026
- Culinary team building and private chef services - 17 March 2026
