27/09/2022 23:24 What PAC Is, and How to Calculate It | by Gelatologist | Medium

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Jan 15, 2019 · 9 min read · Listen

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What PAC Is, and How to Calculate It

A closer look into one of the most ubiquitous acronyms in the Gelato-making world.

A raspberries sorbetto in a pozzetti. Source: www.dissapore.com

Introduction
If you are a nerd like me and have been doing your gelato-making homework, you
will have often come across the acronyms PAC, AFP and/or FPDF. They stand for
‘Potere Anti-Congelante’ (the Italian for ‘Anti-Freezing Power’) and ‘Freezing Point
Depression Factor’, respectively.

What all these acronyms refer to is the lowering (or depression) of the freezing point of
water that certain ingredients in the recipe cause. By comparing the freezing point
depression of each ingredient in proportion to their quantities, we get a number
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from which we can derive how much lower the freezing temperature of the water in
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the recipe will be.

This number is called PAC (or AFP, or FPDF) and is used extensively in the ice cream
and Gelato industries as an indicator of scoopability and serving temperature.
Essentially, the higher the PAC, the softer the cream and the lower the serving
temperature. Makes sense, right? If I make water freeze at a lower temperature, it
will be softer at my current temperature.

So how does PAC work? And how can I calculate it for my recipe?

Let's have a closer look.

[Note: throughout this article I will use PAC to refer to all above, for simplicity].

Understanding How PAC Works

"1 PAC unit corresponds to the freezing point

depression power of 1gr of sucrose dissolved in
100gr of water (i.e. a 1% solution)."
As I mentioned in this article, sugars (but also polyols and salts) have the capacity of
lowering the freezing point of water. To understand the mechanics of how this
happens, we have to talk a bit about Solutions. In chemistry, a solution is a special
type of homogeneous mixture composed of two or more substances. In such a
mixture, a solute is a substance dissolved in another substance, known as a solvent.
What is key about solutions is that the solvent and the solute bind together and a
sort of chemical mating happens.

Water + sugar (in which water is the solvent and sugar the solute) are a classic
example. So is water + salt, and water + alcohol.

Not all substances will dissolve in water though. Water + oil (or any fat for that
matter) won't bind together, so you will end up with a different type of mixture,
which we will discuss in a future article.

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In the case of water-based solutions however, an interesting thing happens. , Take

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the case of water + sugar for example. Not only the sugar will make it taste sweet, it
will also lower (depress) the freezing point of water. The same happens with water +
salt, and with water + alcohol.

This has many useful applications (think spreading roads with salt in winter to avoid
ice forming), but for Gelato and ice cream making it is crucial, because it is by
lowering the freezing point of water that we manage to get creamy delicacies at sub-
zero temperatures (remember, water freezes at 0ºC at sea level).

But to what extent will sucrose lower the freezing point of water, you may ask? That
is a very good questions, but one that we will leave for a future article. Because it is
not important for our PAC calculations, You see, PAC is just an index, a relational
figure, which tells us the potential that our ingredients have to lower the freezing
point of water. So all we need to focus on now is to define what is the reference of
this index.

As we already discussed in this article, there are many types of sugars. Sucrose
being the most common and by far the most used in Gelato (and ice cream) making,
it is only natural that it has been chosen as reference.

With that in mind, some very clever people established our unit of reference as that
which corresponds to the freezing point depression power of 1gr of sucrose dissolved in
100gr of water (i.e. a 1% solution). In a massively creative stunt, they called this unit
Sucrose Equivalent (SE); which incidentally is just a more scientific acronym, but is
essentially the same as PAC, AFP, or FPDF.

So if you take a glass with 100gr of water, add 1gr of sucrose to it you will end up
with a PAC (or AFP, or FPDF, or SE) of 1. Add another 4gr of the sweet stuff and you
will end up with a PAC of 5.

Simple, huh?!

So now that you know what it is, shall we get to grips with how to calculate it in a
recipe?

Calculating PAC
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If we only had sucrose and water in our recipes it would be easy, just calculate how
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many grams of sucrose the recipe has in proportion to 100gr of water. Since most
recipe dosages are determined per kg, all you have to do is divide 100/1000
(remembering that 1lt of water = 1kg) and you will find the total PAC of your recipe.
As simple as that!

Of course, a Gelato made only with water and sucrose would probably taste rather
dull. So we have to find a way to convert other ingredients to PAC so that we can
know the total PAC in a recipe with several different ingredients (and get a bit more
flavour out of it).

As we mentioned earlier, this can all be calculated if we know the molar mass of our
ingredients. But you probably want to spend your time in the lab or kitchen making
delicious Gelato instead of tinkering with an Excel spreadsheet and a chemistry
encyclopaedia, so I put together a nifty table that lists the PAC of several common
ingredients:

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Table 1: some Gelato ingredients and their corresponding PAC. Compiled by SdC and BvH.

You then calculate the amount of any of these substances that appear in our recipe,
always in proportion to 100gr in 1,000gr of water. One thing to keep in mind is that
some of these ingredients are not pure sugars / salts / polyols. So it is key to apply
the values on the table only to the sugar / salt / polyol component of the ingredient.

Sounds complicated? It is not. Let's do a few examples and you will get the hang of it
in a snap.

For that, let's use the following recipe for a very simple fior di latte:

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The first step is to find all ingredients containing substances that will have an
impact on the water's freezing point and isolate their quantities [we will call these
substances components]. There are many more, but for practical purposes we will
focus on the four main groups that can have a meaningful impact on the overall PAC
of a gelato recipe: sugars, polyols, alcohols, and salts.

So in the recipe above we will have the following:

Milk: 4.9% lactose

Cream: 2.8% lactose

Sucrose: 100% sucrose

Dextrose: 92% glucose

Applying the figures above to the recipe and crossing with the PAC equivalence
table, we get the following:

So we can say that the recipe above has the equivalent freezing point depression
power of a solution with 24.2gr of sugar in 100gr of water.
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And ecco qua!!, this is how the PAC of any recipe can be calculated.
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Most Gelato balancing software will perform these calculations automatically for
you, but now you know how they do (or should do) it. And if you don't have a Gelato
balancing software yet — or don't plan to get one any time soon — worry not, I
prepared this nifty spreadsheet so that you can always come back, enter the
ingredients of your recipe and their parameters in the yellow boxes, and it will
calculate the overall PAC for you.

[please note that clicking on the image will open the spreadsheet in a new google sheets
window]

Nifty, huh?! :)

Clicking on the image will open a google spreadsheet in a new window.

The Uses of PAC

"If you compare two recipes, everything else being

the same, the one with the higher PAC will be softer
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at the same temperature in the cabinet."

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That whole calculation is all very nifty and clever, but why do I need to know this,
you might be asking?

The answer to that question is twofold:

First and foremost, knowing the PAC of your recipe will give you an indication of its
potential to lower the freezing point of water. And since water is soft and ice is hard,
the lower the freezing point, the softer your cream will be. So although there are a
few other key factors at play (which I will discuss in a future article), by knowing the
PAC of your recipe you will have a rough indication of its hardness potential. What
this means is that if you compare two recipes, everything else being the same, the
one with the higher PAC will be softer at the same temperature in the cabinet.

Second, by trial and error, Gelatiere have developed a few rules of thumb for
knowing how a typical Gelato recipe will behave in the cabinet. So by balancing
your recipe to standard values, you will be able to have a cream behaving to
industry standards. This rule of thumb applies as follows:

For milk Gelato: PAC ÷ 2 = ideal serving temperature for scoopability. Recommended PAC
range is between 24–28 for a serving temperature of -12º to -14ºC.

For Sorbettos: PAC ÷ 2.5 = ideal serving temperature for scoopability. Recommended PAC
range is between 30 and 36 for a serving temperature of -12º to -14ºC.

* All the above are references only and can vary from artisan to artisan according to
personal preference.

Now, there are severe limitations to this trick — not least because scoopability is
influenced by a few key factors other than PAC — but for practical purposes it is a
good reference if we take it for what it is: a starting point.

And being of widespread use in the industry, it is a good thing that anyone intending
to balance their own recipes knows how it works.

In a future article I will discuss a more objective method to calculate scoopability

and serving temperature which includes two other key factors. But for now you
should have a good grip of what PAC is, how to calculate it and what is its use.

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Bravo!!
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Wrapping Up
1. PAC stands for 'Potere AntiCongelante' and is the same as AFP (Anti Freezing
Power); FPDF (Freezing Point Depression Factor); and SE (Sucrose Equivalent).

2. It indicates the potential a substance has to lower the freezing temperature of

water compared to that of 1gr of sucrose diluted in 100gr of water.

3. You can calculate the PAC of a substance by using its molar mass, or use handy
tables that provide a number for several different ingredients.

4. Conversely, you can calculate the overall PAC of a recipe by factoring the PAC of
individual ingredients and their dosages. Example: milk has 4.9% lactose, which
has a PAC of 100. So 500gr of milk will have a PAC of 2.45, while 1,000gr of milk
will have a PAC of 4.9.

5. The total PAC of a recipe will influence its hardness in the cabinet, so it is
important to keep it within recommended ranges when balancing.

A presto!!

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