We all like ice cream. It is smooth, refreshing. The most important is that it is sweet. It make us feel very happy. Ice cream have a c-haracteristic sweet taste that is critical to product quality. Traditionally the major sweetener used was sucrose. Other sweeteners including glucose, glucose or corn syrups, fructose syrups, fructose, in addition to honey a-nd maple syrup are also used. These sweeteners are referred to as nutritive sweeteners. Other non-nutritive sweeteners, for example, aspartame. Everyone feels different for sweetness. So, it is difficult to be measured. Because sweeteners other than sucrose can be used it is usual to express sweetness of ice cream, as relative sweetness (also known as theoretical sweetness), sweetness of individual sweeteners is expressed relative to sucrose which has a reference value of 1. Scientists can measure sweetness with taste panels. While relative sweetness is widely used in commercial ice cream production the determination of sweetness is largely subjective, so sweetness is not a precise scientific term.

Sweetness of some compounds:

Lactose: 0.16
Maltose: 0.33-0.45
Sorbitol: 0.6
Glucose: 0.74-0.8
Sucrose: 1.00 (reference)
Fructose: 1.17-1.75
Sodium cyclamate: 26
Steviol glycoside: 40-300
Aspartame: 180-250
Sodium sacc-harin: 300-675
Thaumatin: 2000
Lugduname: 300,000 (estimated)