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Silent fast and no crank

TEXT Wouter Klootwijk PHOTOGRAPHY Marcel van den Bergh Article from: volkskrant magazine nr. 8 - 23-10-1999 copyright 1999: volkskrant magazine / Wouter Klootwijk

Gosh, how a banana can dominate. We had made a pure of ripe grapes, apple and pear. We had some whipped cream with sugar, and just when we were about to stir it all together and put the mixture in the ice-cream maker, we spotted the Max Havelaar banana. Havelaar bananas are often somewhat smaller and develop brown spots more quickly than regular bananas, but they do have an excellent taste. So, in went the banana. The grapes turned the mixture carnation in colour. However, when our mixture had become ice cream and was served at table, cheers went up all round and the guests proclaimed that never before had they eaten carnation-coloured banana ice cream, and never one so delicious. And it wasnt even the ice cream we were interested in, but the ice-cream maker. An icecream maker without any moving parts. And therefore, technically speaking, not a machine at all.

We have it on trial. It is made in India, was invented in Ireland and will be available in Dutch stores in time for Christmas. The holiday season. Thinking of slipping on a fetching dress this Christmas? Forget that idea. Our own magazine informs us that fashion this season dictates unwearably thick jumpers, making the thought of ice cream for dessert all the more appealing. The extraordinary, noiseless ice-cream maker is imported by Potten & Pannen in Utrecht, specialist store in household goods and appliances. Frank van Laar, the stores manager, discovered the ice-cream makeron the Internet. And that was by way of an article in de Volkskrant, also about an ice-cream maker. That article was about the Donvier, an ice-cream maker with a crank. With the Donvier, a mixture is put into a deepfrozen cylinder and subsequently freezes against the inner wall of the cylinder. A spatula, turned in the cylinder by hand with the aid of the crank, scrapes the ice cream off the wall of the cylinder, returning it to the liquid mixture. After fifteen minutes of stirring, the mixture is transformed into creamy ice cream. The beauty of the thing lies in its simplicity: no cord with a plug. Scores of readers wrote to us - the letters kept arriving throughout the long, hot summer - asking for the address of the shop stocking the Donvier. A reader from Voorthuizen wrote that, having asked for a Donvier in a large household appliance store, she was told, "Yes, you and everyone else, madam." Not available anywhere, except from the specialist store in Utrecht, where stocks quickly depleted. Replenishing their stock was proving difficult as no one could supply new Donviers. Frank van Laar searched for other ice-cream makers on the Internet, where he found many with cords and plugs and fewer with cranks. But there was one ice-cream maker, new and from a country that wouldnt immediately spring to mind, that did the job without any moving parts. Unbelievable. Well,

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making ice cream without motion is possible. After all, thats just how granny used to do it: ice cream in a cake tin in the freezer. Though her ice cream always turned out rather flaky.

Youre right there, says Michael Laugier the physicist associated with the University of Limerick in Ireland. The motionless ice-cream maker was Laugiers idea. An idea born of a craving for really good ice cream, the type cant buy anywhere but have to make yourself. He had eaten it in his youth; his French grandmother probably made it herself. He remembers her culinary skills. And it was that particular ice cream, that particular taste which he wanted to rediscover. For seven years he pondered over just how it could be done. Laugier: During the process of making sorbet or ice cream, the particles of water in the mixture form ice crystals. In order to maintain the creamy structure, these crystals must stay as small as possible. The faster the mixture freezes, the smaller the crystals. The more slowly it freezes, the larger the crystals become, eventually forming crystals large enough to chew on. All machines for home use work with a spatula that scrapes the thin frozen layer of the icecream mixture off the cold inner wall of the cylinder. Back in the mixture, this small amount of ice again thaws, cooling it. This goes on until the entire mixture freezes. The scraping and mixing is necessary to produce small crystals from large ones. I thought about this process for seven years and came to the conclusion that the spatula was not necessary, but that the freezing process had to be much faster. Laugier made a double-walled pan with a double bottom. He filled the space between the bottom and walls with brine (water with salt). He didnt seal the pan with a regular lid, but with one that fits onto the pan securely, like a stopper for a bottle. This bulging lid, too, was filled with brine. Laugier put pan and lid in the freezer and the salt solution froze. After twenty-four hours, he removed the deep-frozen pan from the freezer and filled it with a mixture of milk, cream, sugar and vanilla extract, put the lid on, and discovered that his theory was proved wonderfully correct: after fifteen minutes the mixture in the pan was completely frozen. After just a quick stir with a spoon, he had choice vanilla ice cream of the kind that could not be bought anywhere in Ireland, only made at home. All came down to the speed of the freezing process. The pan gives off frosty cold air from all round, including from the lid at the top. All other ice-cream makers allow cold air to escape through the lid, if they have a lid at all. Michael Laugier called the pan Midas - it can make a litre of ice cream in fifteen minutes and decided to produce it . He found a factory in India that could manufacture the pans so cheaply, that every household in Ireland would be able to afford one. In the Netherlands, the pan will cost considerably less than that revealing dress for Christmas or the

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sensationally thick sweater prescribed by this seasons fashion. The Utrecht importer of the pan expects the price to be more in the range of a couple of tens of guilders than one hundred. The ice pan was introduced to England last year. Last spring, the consumers association proclaimed the pan the best ice-cream maker for domestic use. And the team of household appliance testers at de Volkskrant, which quickly understood the possibilities for making various types of ice cream using the Midas, is mad about the pan. The first silent, fast icecream maker without a crank.

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