When you freeze the ice cream after it melts from store bought and becomes completely liquid, it doesn’t stay the same way. It just isn’t ice cream anymore, there’s no cream, it becomes like frozen ice lolly kinda texture; completely different from the texture it comes in ie. Soft, fluffy, milky, creamy.
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The ice cream is ruined because it has lost its structure. When ice cream melts and becomes liquid, the air bubbles that give it a light and fluffy texture are released. When you freeze it back again, those air bubbles are gone and the ice cream is dense and heavy.
The ELI5 version is that ice cream contains a lot of air between the ice crystal and thus softer than a normal ice.
When they become liquid and refreeze, it’s now just an ice cube which is dense and hard.
I don’t know exactly why, but I do know texture matters. There was this place where I used to live that sold extra fluffy ice cream. It was good, but just had the regular flavors. I think they told me they made it and used helium or something. It has been a while. There is a special Pepsi that uses something similar to make the bubbles smoother, haven’t tried it yet.
Because I’ve cream is whipped with small amounts of air to give it the texture that we love.
When it melts, all of the air bubbles are lost and we lose the part that we love the most!
The texture of icecream is largely based on the size of the ice crystals in it. Small crystals wrapped in sugar and fat is glorious
The reason you churn and mix icecream constantly as you make it is specifically to break up those crystals as they form; Make em all small, and uniform.
But when it melts, and you try to freeze that custard again, you don’t stir it. The ice crystals form massive, crusty shards that don’t feel silky snothy
Ice cream also has air injected into the mix before it is put into the container. When it melts the resulting refreeze doesn’t get the air injection so it sets hard.
It don’t make a bit of difference whether the ice cream is frozen or not, all of the molecules are the same whether it’s frozen or not. Freeze it back up and it tastes the same. The reason the stores get rid of it when it melts , they just don’t want to deal with re freezing it.
The same difference between ice and snow. If you melt some snow and then you freeze it again, you are now expecting to get snow back, are you?
What matters is the fine crystal structure of the iced water: many little crystals in one case, a single big one in the other case.
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