Sixty human volunteer taste-testers found that yoghurt and ice cream made from mare’s milk to be creamy and visually appealing with a good taste and texture.
The ice creams that most people are familiar with are made by adding cow’s milk to cow’s cream, along with a variety of other ingredients. But can a person create a tasty frozen treat if one replaces cow milk with horse milk?
Indeed they can. A team of scientists at the West Pomeranian University of Technology tested this idea by creating four types of ice cream from mare’s milk and different bacteria and they report on the health benefits of these creations.
Consuming mare’s milk is not be as weird as some people might think: historically, consumption of mare’s milk has been an important part of Mongolian culture for thousands of years where it has been fermented into a potent alcoholic drink, airag, and where it is thought to impart yet-to-be-proven health benefits to those who consume it.
Milking the horses in the Orkhon valley. The milk is fermented to make airag, a potent alcoholic … [+]
Foodies and consumers alike are becoming increasingly interested in so-called functional food items. Basically, functional foods are those that offer health benefits beyond their nutritional value. In addition to nutrient-rich ingredients like fruits and vegetables, this category includes foods fortified with vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and fiber.
Mare’s milk is one of these functional foods. It has a low casein-to-whey protein ratio, low mineral content, high lactose concentration, and polyunsaturated fatty acid composition. Additionally, mare’s milk also includes bioactive compounds, enzymes and proteins that may have medicinal properties, which might help cure or prevent gastrointestinal and respiratory disorders. Further, mare’s milk is more similar to human milk than it is to cow’s milk, so people with allergies to cow’s milk often can safely consume horse milk. A variety of traditional dairy products, such as yogurt, kefir, and probiotic fermented beverages, can be made from mare’s milk. Thus, curious scientists have been working to develop the use of horse milk instead of cow milk in various food products.
In this study, the researchers investigated the use of mare’s milk to make yoghurt ice creams and synbiotic ice creams that contain probiotic microbes and inulin. Inulin is a starchy substance found in a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, and herbs. In the human gut, it acts as a prebiotic that is neither digested nor absorbed in the stomach but rather, it stays in the bowel where it helps certain beneficial bacteria to thrive.
To do this work, the researchers obtained mare’s milk from Poland, pasteurized it and used it to created four types of ice creams by varying additional yoghurt cultures and the sweetener inulin. Tests were then carried out to determine factors including how fast the ice cream melted, the consistency and creaminess, how the different ice creams tasted, their nutritional values, and overall appearance.
The team of scientists prepared 60 samples of ice cream, each weighing 50 grams. A day later, they performed a variety of analyses including sensory, physicochemical, textural and microbiological analyses. The researchers did find that the ice creams melted quickly, but this may be due to its low fat content.
The 60 human taste-testers found all of the ice creams to be creamy and attractive — both tasty and with good texture, though the sample with both yogurt bacteria and inulin were described as having a slight acidic flavor. But the color of all the ice cream samples was described as “white-creamy and uniform” and they all had a “pleasant creamy taste.”
In short: YUM! Mare’s milk ice cream is a tasty and nutritious treat.
“Mare’s milk is suitable raw material for yoghurt ice cream and synbiotic ice cream production, which due to unique composition of mare’s milk may be perceived as valuable functional food, bringing benefits to consumer’s health,” the researchers wrote.
But that said, I do have one reservation: in view of the dairy industry’s extreme abuse towards dairy cows (who only live somewhere between 4.5 and 6 years of their average 20-year life span before slaughter) and their calves (most of whom are slaughtered for veal after a brief stay in a tiny box), I worry that dairy mares and their foals will also be met with this same inhumane outcome.
Source:
Katarzyna Szkolnicka, Anna Mituniewicz-Małek, Izabela Dmytrów & Elżbieta Bogusławska-Wąs (2024). The use of mare’s milk for yogurt ice cream and synbiotic ice cream production, PLOS ONE | doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0304692
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