Introduction

Get started with Ice Cream Calculator: create balanced recipes using science-based formulation, explore 500+ ingredients, analyze with charts, generate AI recipes, and scale batches for perfect texture and sweetness.

Ice Cream Science - The Short Version

Ice cream as a frozen foam system: every ingredient has a sensory and a technical job, and PAC, POD and total solids describe sweetness, softness and body. Explains frozen water, why serving temperature matters and what the calculator's Serving Temp and Gelato Temp mean.

Desktop Migration Guide

Move your Ice Cream Calculator desktop data to the web: Quick Migrate imports ingredients, charts and recipes in one click; the advanced import lets you pick items, match ingredients and import production plans. Also covers Export to Desktop and what transfers.

Settings

Every option on the Settings page and its default: serving-temperature targets (FW%) and scoopability markers, units, decimal places, default overrun, serving size, recipe tab bar, notifications, ingredient settings, custom ingredient properties, cookies, and how settings work for guests.

Install Ice Cream Calculator as an App

Install Ice Cream Calculator as an app in its own window on Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad and Android: step-by-step for Chrome, Edge, Safari and Firefox, plus uninstalling, the ICC icon name, and why the app needs an internet connection.

Account, Premium and Your Data

What guests, free accounts and Premium get, the 15-recipe limit, how to upgrade, manage or cancel Premium, what happens when it ends, the Account page cards (logo, API key, sharing profile, password), the app language, and downloading or deleting your data.

Collections: Organize Your Recipes and Ingredients

Collections are playlists for your recipes and ingredients: named groups you create to organize your work by menu, client, season, supplier or project. Learn how collections work, what they are good for, and ideas for using them.

Stabilizers & Emulsifiers

Complete guide to stabilizers and emulsifiers in ice cream: usage rates, hydration requirements, substitution tips, and recommended blends (LBG, guar, carrageenan, gelatin, CMC, xanthan). Includes emulsifier science, Neutro blends, and clean-label considerations.

Understanding Scoopability and Serving Temperatures

How frozen water percentage sets ice cream texture, how the calculator works out Serving temp and Gelato temp, how to open and read the Freezing Curve page, and how the Scoopability card's bar, markers and PAC/POD −/+ buttons help you adjust a recipe.

Glucose and Dextrose Explained

Glucose syrup (DE 40, DE 60), glucose powder, maltodextrin and dextrose in ice cream: what DE means for sweetness, softness (PAC) and body, and why the calculator's Total Sugars for a syrup is lower than in gelato manuals while PAC, POD and total solids match.

Freezing Point Depression

How sugars, salt, alcohol and milk minerals lower the freezing point of your mix, how Ice Cream Calculator turns that into a freezing point and a freezing curve, why ice cream keeps freezing as it gets colder, and how to choose sugars to make ice cream softer without making it sweeter.

How PAC and POD Are Calculated

Where an ingredient's PAC and POD come from: why small sugars soften more, why sweetness can only be measured by tasting, how an ingredient's values follow from the sugars it contains (with honey as a worked example), and what the calculator does when a label only lists total sugars. With tips for getting accurate values.

How Ice Cream Is Made

The ice cream process step by step: weighing, mixing, heating, homogenizing, cooling, aging, churning and hardening, what each step does and why it matters. Includes four home methods (stovetop, blender, sous-vide and no-cook), freeze-then-spin machines, and how the calculator helps at each stage.

Eggs in Ice Cream

What egg yolks do in ice cream (emulsifier, fat, body and flavor) and how many to use, with a side-by-side test of five ice creams with 0 to 8 yolks per kg balanced to the same targets: overrun, melting, taste and the full recipes.

Stabilizer Experiment: How Much Locust Bean Gum?

A side-by-side test of the same ice cream with no locust bean gum, 0.25% and 0.5% of the water weight: how the dose changed mix thickness, overrun, taste, texture and melting, what worked best, and how to use the result with the calculator's Stabilizers/Water target and Stabilizer Ratio tool.

Raw Egg Yolks and Food Safety

Is it safe to use raw egg yolks in ice cream? The salmonella risk, who should avoid raw eggs, the safest ways to use eggs (cooking the base, pasteurized eggs, or no eggs), safe handling, and how official advice differs between the US, the UK and Sweden, with sources.

Introduction to Vegan Ice Cream (by Chiara Ghiron)

Guest article by Chiara Ghiron, chemist and vegan ice cream teacher: why plant-based ice cream is hard to get right, how fats, proteins, starches and fibers replace what milk, cream and eggs do, her two approaches (soy milk or cashew and coconut oil), and the practical, ethical and cost questions. With notes on the calculator's vegan charts.

Recipes

Find, filter and organize your recipes on the Recipes page: search with AND, OR and wildcards, filters for hidden, unsaved, rated and community recipes, collections, tags, bulk actions and the free-plan lock. Plus Create Recipe: blank, AI, your templates and samples.

Recipe View

Guide to the Recipe View page: product image, stats and your rating, Edit Recipe, Start Production, Reports, the Properties dialog, History, the ingredient preview with working-copy diff, recipe cards, community and private-link sharing, printing, deleting or archiving, and Customize View.

Recipe Editor

Complete guide to the Recipe Editor: the working copy and Save, undo, the Properties dialog, the ingredient table (add, replace, lock, inclusions), weights and scaling, overrun and machines, the Chart menu, Smart Balance, snapshots, scoopability and POD buttons, cards and shortcuts.

Editor Cards and Layout

The Recipe Editor's cards (Chart, Scoopability, Recipe Data, Freezing Curve, Data table, Nutrition, Description & Notes, Instructions, Cost, Sugars, Tools) and the Customize layout designer: presets, groups and widths, card heights, drag and drop, and phone layout.

AI Recipe Generator

Generate a recipe with AI from a flavour and style, or paste an existing recipe to recreate it in grams. Ingredients are matched to your library, Flavor recipes are auto-balanced against a chart, and the recipe opens in the Recipe Editor.

Recipe Instructions

Write a recipe's method as groups of numbered steps in the Recipe Editor's Instructions card or in Properties. Covers the instructions editor, quick steps and templates, when changes are saved, and where instructions appear: recipe cards, printing, Produce, shares and reports.

Recipe Cards

Create unlimited customizable recipe cards with 8 configurable sections: images, ingredients, instructions, nutrition, info chips (PAC, POD, cost), and notes. Build recipe-specific cards or reusable global templates for printing, sharing, and manufacturing.

Recipe Ratings

Rate your own recipes with five personal star ratings (Overall, Texture, Body, Taste, Color): where to rate, where ratings show, Recipes page filters and sorting, rating reminders, rating recipes cloned from the community, and ratings in exports, reports and the desktop app.

Recipe Weights, Scaling & Evaporation

Master recipe scaling, weight conversions, and evaporation tracking. Learn to resize batches, convert volumes to grams, account for water loss during cooking, and use advanced scaling modes to fit any machine or container.

Ingredients

Complete guide to the ingredient library and editor: search, sort, filter and choose columns; add ingredients from the Add ingredient menu; edit properties, cost, sugars and allergens; shared vs personal ingredients; PAC, POD and HF values; validation checks and quick fixes.

How to add ingredients

Step-by-step guide to adding ingredients: choose an import method (USDA, Nutrition Label, AI, From Recipe), set food type, fix PAC/POD and Total Solids, with a type-by-type guide.

Nutrition Label Import

Import ingredients from product packaging into the calculator. Learn how to enter EU or US nutrition label data, convert serving sizes, select correct food types, and understand how the calculator fills in missing ice cream properties like PAC, POD, and MSNF.

Food Databases

How to import ingredients from national food composition databases (USDA, BLS, Livsmedelsverket, CIQUAL, CoFID, Fineli and more): search in English or native names, read the Data and Score columns, pick the food type, and see how values and sugars are converted.

AI Ingredient

Learn how to create ingredients using AI Assistant: estimate complete nutritional profiles and ice cream properties from ingredient names, handle complex multi-category items like chocolate chips, and use context for better accuracy.

Sugar Composition

Explains how to record an ingredient's sucrose, glucose, fructose, lactose and other sugar fields to calculate accurate PAC/POD, track recipe per-sugar totals, and use AI proposals or fix actions to balance the split. Premium feature.

Convert to Personal Ingredients

Explains the Convert to Personal Ingredients tool, which turns standard ingredients in selected recipes into personal copies or replacements, enabling sub-ingredient and allergen labeling.

Using a Recipe as an Ingredient

Turn a base, sauce or variegate recipe into a recipe-derived ingredient: create it with Save as Ingredient or the Recipe button, keep it in sync, inherit sub-ingredients and allergens, manage it on the Recipe Ingredients page, and use it in production and planning.

Ingredient Packs

Import curated packs of branded and specialty ingredients as your own editable copies, filed in a collection named after the pack. Covers browsing as a guest, Premium packs, ingredients you already have, pack versions and Review updates, removing pack ingredients, and checking pack data.

Tools Overview

Every tool on the Tools page in one place: what each calculator, planner, import and export does, whether it is free, needs sign-in or Premium, and where to read more. Includes the editor-only tools Replace Milk and Cream, Stabilizer Ratio and Final Water %.

Import and Export

All import and export tools on the Tools page: import recipes, ingredients and charts; export to Excel, JSON and the desktop app; Excel Backup. Which files they use, what each file contains, and which tools need Premium.

HTML Reports

Create reports, labels, spec sheets and work orders from recipes, recipe sets, products and production plans with HTML templates: tag syntax, repeat blocks, recipe instructions (method), QR codes and barcodes, input fields, label sheets, Quick Report and Python scripts.

Volume Estimator

Calculate total ice cream volume from base mix weight, density, overrun and inclusions. Load a recipe or enter values by hand. Includes a 100+ item inclusion library with displacement values, a bulkiness slider for custom add-ins, and per-liter figures for container planning.

Brix Adjustment Tool

Correct sorbet and gelato recipes at production time with a refractometer: measure the fruit (Mode A) or the finished mix (Mode B) to get the sugar, syrup or water correction, or use Cooking Reduction (Mode C) to find the weight to cook pâte de fruit down to.

Display Case

Plan your gelato or ice cream cabinet: set the case temperature and see for every flavor whether it is too hard, ideal, soft or too soft, from its frozen water percentage, with sweetness (POD), allergens and nutrition per 100 g.

Production System

Overview of the Premium Production system: the Production Hub, stock in lots with FEFO, quick and planned production, scrap, the Production Log and Analytics, traceability, products and packaging, recipe sets and sales orders, and first steps.

Production Planning

Schedule recipes and packed products on a weekly drag-and-drop calendar, size batches by weight, containers or a limiting ingredient, forecast ingredients against stock, orders and planned production, plan packing tasks, print work orders and import desktop plans. Premium.

Stock Management

Track ingredient inventory with automatic stock deduction, purchase recording, expiry alerts, FIFO consumption, and real-time cost calculation for production batches.

Production Logging

Log batches from the Produce page (Premium): scale by multiplier, weight, containers or buckets; weigh with the checklist and lot hints; mark as produced with FEFO lots and Adjust lots; scrap failed batches; use the Production Log, Production Details and Analytics.

Production Traceability

Track ingredients bidirectionally: trace supplier lots forward to find affected batches during recalls, or trace finished batches backward to identify ingredient lots used in production.

Products and Packing

Define packed products from recipes (g or mL per unit) and packaging items, see cost per unit, print product specification sheets and labels, pack units from produced batches, and track Product Inventory with Sell/Use, Pack More and reusable containers. Premium.

Production System – Weight, Volume & Overrun

How mix weight, evaporation, overrun, density, inclusions and waste factors become planned quantities, stock deductions, batch yield and packing draws. Covers planning by weight, containers, ingredient limit or product, and why planning, production and packing numbers differ.

How Production & Packing Quantities Work

Learn how ice cream quantities change from mix to container: mix weight, evaporation loss, overrun (air incorporation), inclusions, and how the system calculates backwards from packing needs to recipe amounts.

Sharing

Share recipes and charts publicly on Explore or privately with links: the share dialog and product photo, snapshots and Update Share, the sharing profile, My Shares, browsing and cloning, community star ratings, and rating recipes you cloned.

Showcase

Show your products to customers as a full-screen menu with prices, images, ingredients, allergens and nutrition: customer mode with an exit PIN on your own tablet, or a public link and QR code for phones. Covers settings (style, cards per row, footer logo, what the detail view shows), order showcases from sales orders, customer language and custom domains.

Charts

Charts set target ranges for recipe properties like fat, solids, POD, PAC and serving temperature. Read chart colors, use personal and default (standard) charts, copy and edit charts, set Min, Max, Target and High Priority, create a chart from a recipe, compare recipes and auto-scale.

Balancing

Balance ice cream recipes automatically with Smart Balance: choose a chart, set ingredient classes (Flav, Stab, Emul, Fib, HIS), lock ingredients, Classify with AI, read the balance result, get balance advice, balance to snapshot, and quick-adjust PAC and POD.

Flavor Profile

Radar chart of five taste and texture scores (Sweetness, Creaminess, Coldness, Body, Scoopability) calculated from your recipe and your temperature settings. Compare a recipe with reference styles or another recipe, served as ice cream or gelato.

Recipe Data Calculation System

How Ice Cream Calc calculates hundreds of recipe data items: the mix, nutrition and cost bases, /Water and /TS suffixes, PAC, POD, perceived sweetness, serving temperatures, label values, the Recipe Data dialog and custom formulas.

Balancing for Different Ice Cream Types

How to approach balancing for different styles: the decisions that define a style (eggs, fat, solids, sweetness, serving temperature), which default chart to choose, and how to set up Smart Balance for vanilla and other small-dose flavors, chocolate, and fruit.

Nutrition Labels

Create a nutrition label for your recipe: open it from the Recipe Editor, choose the EU, US FDA or AU/NZ format and serving size, check the ingredient list and allergen statement, see if the recipe is ready for professional labeling, and copy the parts into your artwork.

AI Labeling

Guide to the Premium AI Labeling tool that bulk-generates sub-ingredients and allergen assignments for your own ingredients via web search, with a review-and-apply workflow before saving.

Professional Ingredient Lists

Learn how to build legally compliant ingredient declarations with sub-ingredients, allergen highlighting, percentage declarations, and custom allergen statements for professional ice cream labels.

Recipe Sets & Labels

Group recipes into sets to get a combined per-100 g nutrition table, merged ingredient list and allergen declaration for variety packs and praline boxes. Generate reports from templates, and keep sales orders with CSV import and customer showcase QR codes.

REST API

Use the Ice Cream Calculator REST API with a Premium account: generate an API key, authenticate with X-API-Key, list, create, update, delete and balance recipes, read, create and update ingredients, and fix 401, 429 and CORS errors.

REST API Reference

Complete technical reference for all Ice Cream Calculator REST API endpoints: authentication, recipes (list, get, create, update, delete, calculate, balance), ingredients (list, get, create, update, sub-ingredients and allergens), recipe and ingredient collections (list, get, create, rename, delete, add and remove items), allergen and ingredient group lookups, request/response formats, error handling, and rate limits.