PAC and POD in One Minute
Every sweet ingredient does two jobs in ice cream, and the calculator gives each job a number:
- PAC (potere anti-congelante, anti-freezing power) says how much the ingredient lowers the freezing point of water, and so how soft it makes your ice cream. You may also see it called AFP or FPDF.
- POD (potere dolcificante, sweetening power) says how sweet it tastes. You may also see it called SP.
Both are measured against sucrose (table sugar), which is set to 100. A sugar with a PAC of 190 softens almost twice as much as the same weight of sucrose; a sugar with a POD of 50 tastes half as sweet.
This article explains where those numbers come from for a single sugar and for a whole ingredient. How PAC then turns into a freezing point and a serving temperature is explained in Freezing Point Depression.
Where PAC Comes From
Freezing point depression depends on the number of dissolved molecules, not on their weight. So a sugar's PAC follows from the size of its molecule:
- A molecule half the size of sucrose means about twice as many molecules in each gram, and so about twice the PAC.
- A molecule the same size as sucrose gives about the same PAC.
- A larger molecule gives a lower PAC.
Example: sucrose is made of one glucose and one fructose unit joined together. A fructose molecule on its own is therefore about half the size of sucrose, and fructose has a PAC of about 190.
That puts the sugars you are likely to use into three groups:
| Group | Sugars | Typical PAC |
|---|---|---|
| Single sugars (monosaccharides) | Dextrose (glucose), fructose, galactose | about 190 |
| Double sugars (disaccharides) | Sucrose, lactose, maltose, trehalose | 100 |
| Longer chains | Maltotriose, maltodextrins, the larger sugars in glucose syrups | below 100, falling as the chains get longer |
Two non-sugars also count:
- Alcohol is a very small molecule with a PAC of about 740, so the alcohol in a spirit or liqueur is part of that ingredient's PAC.
- Sugar alcohols (polyols) such as erythritol, sorbitol or maltitol vary a lot with their molecule size. Most of them soften more than sucrose and taste less sweet.
Where POD Comes From
Sweetness cannot be calculated from the molecule. It is measured by taste panels: trained tasters compare solutions of a sugar with sucrose solutions and find the strength at which they taste equally sweet. That is why POD values are rounded and why different sources give slightly different figures.
| Sugar | POD |
|---|---|
| Fructose | about 170 |
| Sucrose | 100 |
| Dextrose (glucose) | about 77 |
| Maltose | about 40 |
| Lactose | about 16 |
Sweetness is also less fixed than PAC. Sugars differ in how fast the sweetness arrives and how long it lasts, some have a cooling effect or an aftertaste, and a mixture of sugars at high concentration tastes less sweet than the sum of its parts. Cold also dulls sweetness, which is why ice cream mixes taste too sweet before freezing.
Note: POD adds up each sugar's fixed sweetness. Premium users also get Perceived sweetness in the Recipe Data, which estimates how sweet the mix actually tastes at its own sugar concentration. See Sugar Composition.
From Sugars to an Ingredient
Most ingredients contain a mixture of sugars. Their PAC and POD are simply the contributions of each sugar added together: the amount of the sugar times its PAC or POD.
Example: honey. A typical honey contains about 17% water and, per 100 g, roughly these sugars:
| Sugar (per 100 g honey) | Amount | Adds to PAC | Adds to POD |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fructose | 38 g | about 72 | about 65 |
| Glucose | 31 g | about 59 | about 24 |
| Maltose | 7 g | about 7 | about 3 |
| Sucrose | 1 g | about 1 | about 1 |
| Total | 77 g | about 139 | about 93 |
So 100 g of honey softens about as much as 139 g of sucrose, but only tastes about as sweet as 93 g. Swapping sugar for honey gram for gram makes ice cream noticeably softer and a little less sweet, and also adds water. Real honeys vary with the flowers they come from, so treat these figures as typical, not exact.
Glucose Syrups and Maltodextrins
Glucose syrups, glucose powders and maltodextrins are made by breaking starch down into sugars of many sizes. Their dextrose equivalent (DE) tells you how far that went: a higher DE means more small sugars and fewer long chains, so a higher PAC and more sweetness. A DE 20 maltodextrin adds body with very little sweetness or softening; a DE 60 glucose syrup softens and sweetens much more.
For these products the calculator works from the DE rather than adding up individual sugars. For what DE means in practice, see Glucose and Dextrose Explained.
When Only Total Sugars Are Known
This is where it gets difficult. A nutrition label only has to declare total sugars, not which sugars they are, and many food database entries are the same. A product with 34 g of sugars per 100 g could be mostly sucrose, mostly fructose, or anything in between, and those give very different PAC and POD values.
When the calculator does not know the split, it makes a sensible assumption:
- For dairy ingredients, the sugar is counted as lactose.
- For everything else, it is counted as sucrose.
For many ingredients that is close enough. For others it is not. Example: a fruit purée with 10 g of sugar per 100 g, most of it glucose and fructose. Counted as sucrose, it gets a PAC of about 10 and a POD of about 10. With its real sugars, the PAC is closer to 18 and the POD closer to 13. A sorbet made with lots of that purée will come out softer and sweeter than the calculator predicted.
Getting Better Values
The more you know about an ingredient's sugars, the more accurate your PAC and POD:
- Record the sugar composition (Premium). On the Sugars tab of the ingredient editor you can enter the sugars from a data sheet, or click Propose with AI to have the split estimated from the ingredient's name and values. The calculator then works out PAC and POD from the sugars. See Sugar Composition.
- Import from a food database. Many entries list the individual sugars, and the calculator uses them automatically. See Food Databases.
- Read the ingredient list. A label that lists glucose syrup, dextrose or invert sugar tells you the sugar is not all sucrose, even if the amounts are missing.
- Ask for a technical data sheet. Suppliers of ingredients for professionals often publish the full carbohydrate profile, and products made for ice cream sometimes state PAC and POD directly. Supermarket products rarely have one.
- Use AI Ingredient to estimate a complete ingredient, sugars included, when you only know what it is. See AI Ingredient.
Tip: Focus on the ingredients that bring a lot of sugar to your recipe: fruit, syrups, honey, sweetened pastes and liqueurs. A wrong guess for an ingredient that adds 2 g of sugar hardly matters; one that adds 100 g does.