Oliver Sacks is coming over for dinner? Sounds like the perfect excuse to whip up some liquid nitrogen ice cream!
We mixed up a standard ice cream recipe calling for two quarts of cream, sugar, eggs, vanilla and flavoring. (Just about any ice cream recipe and flavor will work.) Then, working in a well-ventilated area (lest the nitrogen displace oxygen from the air) and with due regard for the ability of liquid nitrogen to freeze body parts solid, we gently folded about two liters of nitrogen syrup directly into the cream, much as you would fold in egg whites.
The result, literally 30 seconds later, was a half-gallon of the best ice cream I'd ever tasted. The secret is in the rapid freezing. When cream is frozen by liquid nitrogen at –196°C, the ice crystals that give bad ice cream its grainy texture have no chance to form. Instead you get microcrystalline ice cream that is supremely smooth, creamy and light in texture. Martha Stewart, eat your heart out.
YUM. Can one readily obtain liquid nitrogen, or do you have to be a special science kid?
Posted by: callalillie | July 24, 2003 at 10:43 PM
You can buy it on the Inter-net!
https://www1.fishersci.com/Coupon?catnum=NC9790367
Here's more info. on doing this at home:
http://www.williams.edu/physics/kforkey/ice.htm
Posted by: Alaina | July 24, 2003 at 11:06 PM
No lard?!
Hahahahahahaha.
Have a nice weekend :-)
Posted by: ChrisM | July 25, 2003 at 08:13 AM
There was a decent thread (http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/26892) at Metafilter that debunked that Lizzie quadratic factoring method story. It would have been cool if it was true, but unfortunately I think they went with the sizzle over the substance.
Posted by: zod | July 26, 2003 at 04:00 PM
Bill Amend, the cartoonist, must have been reading this article when he came up with this comic:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/uclickcomics/20030727/cx_ft_uc/ft20030727&e=2
Posted by: Spike | July 28, 2003 at 03:15 PM
"Chemeril" -- nice.
Posted by: Alaina | July 28, 2003 at 03:52 PM