Characteristics of Ice Cream Made from Mare’s Milk

Milk and milk products are the most nutritive and biological valuable foods. Currently, there are hundreds types of functional milk products including; yogurt, curd, cheesecake, pudding and ice cream. These functional products are not just sweet treats but have a therapeutic effect on the human body¹.

Mare’s milk has a neutral acidity and sweet taste, is fresh, and ranges from bluish-white to slightly brown in coloration. Important components of this type of milk include lactose, protein, fat, vitamins, enzymes and minerals². It also has high nutritive value. Its protein and fat are well digested and its fat has a low melting temperature as compared with cow’s milk.

A variety of milk desserts are widely manufactured in countries with a milk industry. The purpose of developing dietary milk products involves enhancing protein, fat, mineral and vitamin composition and enrichment with biologically active compounds to improve flavor, nutritive and biological value. Among the milk products, ice cream is growing in popularity. Ice cream is characterized as a frozen milk dessert product comprised of milk, sugar, stabilizer, emulsifier and flavoring³.

Competition within the ice cream market requires product extension and production of quality food at a reliable price and calls for development of new methods to produce this product. In the view of this context a new research was conducted in order to develop new technology and study the nutritive and biological value of a new healthy food-mare’s milk-based ice cream⁴.

Ice cream types differed in amino acid composition. Ice cream with only mare’s milk had the lowest content of amino acid compared with MM-40 and MM-30. Thus, a combination of mare’s and cow’s milk enriched the ice cream with methionine, glycine, histidine, proline, threonine and valine.

Results demonstrated that the nutritive value of mare’s milk ice cream could be beneficial for low-fat nutrition. For ice cream production, mare’s and cow’s milk was used in different proportions. Based on the chemical, amino acid, mineral and vitamin composition findings, the ice cream with 40% of mares and 60% of cow’s milk was proposed for healthy nutrition.

The existing trend in milk dessert is the development and production of dietary low-fat ice cream enriched with different additives. A combination of cow’s and mare’s milk in an ice cream mixture decreased fat content and enhanced amino acid composition, including methionine, glycine, histidine, proline, threonine and valine. These findings suggest a beneficial role of mare’s milk in ice cream production with low-fat content.

References:

1. Salem, M.M.E., F.A. Fathi and R.A. Awad, 2005. Production of probiotic ice cream. Polish J. Food Nutr. Sci., 14: 267-271.
2. Malacarne, M., F. Martuzzi, A. Summer and P. Mariani, 2002. Protein and fat composition of mare’s milk: Some nutritional remarks with reference to human and cow’s milk. Dairy J., 12: 869-877.
3. Ellinger, S., K.P. Linscheid, S. Jahnecke, R. Goerlich and H. Enbergs, 2002. The effect of mare’s milk consumption on functional elements of phagocytosis of human neutrophil granulocytes from healthy volunteers. Food Agric. Immunol., 14: 191-200.
4. Aigerim A., Nabidulla K., Kymbat S., Zhanagul S. and Eleonora O., 2017. Nutritive and Biological Value of Mare’s Milk Ice Cream. J. Nutr., 16: 457-462.