Reasons for separating eggs in ice cream

reno_rita

There are a lot of recipes requiring the eggs in the ingredients to be separated. And I know that whipping whole eggs cannot foam up as much as just whipping egg whites. But why separate eggs in making of the custard for ice cream? Egg whites can foam up better than egg yolks, so it seems counter-intuitive to remove egg whites from the recipe because you would want to incorporate more air into the ice cream, right? :/ I can simply use 1 whole...

Originally asked by Daniel Cheung on Stack Exchange (cooking) (CC BY-SA 3.0).

uphilltech

Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:

Milk and cream are essentially made up of water, fat, and protein molecules. Within milk and cream, the fat globules are already emulsified in the surrounding water by casein (one of the proteins found in milk and cream). This means that casein molecules surround each fat globule and prevent them from coming together. This is why milk doesn't separate into fat and water, even though it's made up of two substances that don't naturally mix. However, casein is a little too good at emulsifying the fat. When we add egg yolks, the lecithin in the yolk displaces some of the casein surrounding each fat globule. This partially destabilizes the emulsion of the milkfat by casein and allows some of the...

Full answer by Josh: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/78855 (CC BY-SA 3.0).

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