The raisins in the freezer.

The topic is not as culinary as it is physico-chemical and anabiotic,

As a child, I loved ice cream with raisins. And even then it caused me some perplexity.

Later, when I grew up a little, I noticed such a strange thing: Any ice cream with anything is sold in the package, but not with raisins.

Once I found it in an American supermarket, bought it, but after a short time it disappeared from sale and did not appear again.

And the surprise and perplexity was caused by a simple fact: Ice cream is stored at subzero temperatures, and not a couple of degrees below zero, but minus ten to fifteen. So, why don’t the raisins in it turn into icy oval bodies? Since I have always seen such ice cream only in cafes, I decided that the reason is simple: Workers simply pour raisins into ice cream when it is already in less low-temperature storages and therefore does not have time to freeze.

Another is that raisins are thrown into ice cream WITHOUT boiling it with hot water and, accordingly, without swelling it.

The fact that the ice cream with raisins in the package disappeared from sale explains this: The raisins froze, and the product, after the failure of the experimental batch, was withdrawn from production.

And the grapes are freezing in the freezer!

Again, why don’t the raisins get icy???

I decided to conduct a series of experiments myself in order to get answers to the questions.

He took a portion of raisins, poured them into a bowl and poured boiling water, leaving it to cool for several hours. Then he drained the water and made a “sandwich”: Put a layer of raisins in a jar, which had been treated with boiling water and was strongly swollen and softened, then a layer of ice cream on top and again a layer of raisins.

I put such a three-layer sandwich in the freezer for a day.

When I chose it, I found a normal rather hard ice cream and SOFT RAISINS!!!

But, after all, it was not even the original dry raisins, but swollen from hot water. Why didn’t he turn into ice in 24 hours? After all, its internal contents were now all soaked in water!!!

And if the grapes freeze properly, then the raisins SWOLLEN FROM the WATER, it seems, should also have become an “ice floe”!

In his youth, he was interested in suspended animation, read several monographs on this topic, even the book “Suspended Animation” by a Soviet biophysicist and visionary academician, but forgot his last name. I remember running away from class to get to the Central Scientific Library as soon as possible.

No, I suddenly remembered: P.P. Lazarev!

Heartfelt thanks to dear Superconsciousness for the hint!!!

It opened the gates to Consciousness and properly closed the long-ago opened synapses! Because I KNEW that I REMEMBERED his last name, but I could not close the neural chain of thought in any way to come to the area in the brain where Lazarev Pyotr Petrovich WAS REMEMBERED!!!

I immediately remembered some details of the process: It turns out that fish frozen in ice, insects freezing in winter, perfectly come out of suspended animation in spring without the slightest damage to their cells by the formed ice. Namely, its crystals, growing inside the cells, “explode” them and, when thawing, instead of cellular structures, a spreading mass of protoplasm.

DEATH!

This also applies to the fruits of plants that have enough water inside.

So, it turns out that some creatures have adapted to freezing by increasing the concentration of glycerin in their cells in advance, which is why ice is formed not coarse-grained, but FINELY and this keeps the cells intact.

To be honest, I was not convinced by this “explanation”, because what difference does it make if the ice crystals are large or small? The VOLUME OF ICE is 10% more than the same volume of water and the ice should, growing, break the cells anyway.

Unless the elasticity of the membranes is preserved (maybe GLYCERIN DOES just THAT) and they just stretch without damage?

But ice forms, nevertheless, but it DOES NOT FORM in frozen raisins!

So some kind of natural “antifreeze” appears in the raisins when dried!?

I once froze a chicken egg. Then I defrosted it and decided to make fried eggs or fried eggs out of it. IT DIDN’T WORK OUT! The protein thawed normally, but the yolk experienced denaturation during freezing and moved from a liquid state to a stable compact one.

(I subsequently based ON THIS EFFECT an easy method of preparing products for the production of “Meringue”. The compact yolk does not require the usual care when breaking an egg and separating by transfusion of protein and yolk so that the yolk does not get into the protein. See the corresponding note).

So, a kind of natural antifreeze in raisins and also soluble in water. I don’t know what it is, but the last time I DIDN’T POUR out the remaining water, I decided to freeze it too. If there is an antifreeze of raisins in it, then the water with it should not freeze.

I’M FROZEN!

So there wasn’t enough antifreeze, and there was enough in the raisins to keep it ice-free!

Hypotheses and questions:

This antifreeze is either always present in grapes, but in fresh, not dried, its concentration is low and therefore the grapes freeze or it is formed only during the drying of grapes in the sun.

I would like to know WHAT IT IS?

And whether it can be mixed into other living cells before freezing.

Another thought, well, quite fantastic: Ice forms inside raisin cells, but remains in the form of LIQUID crystals, without turning into SOLID crystals. This again brings us back to glycerin as increasing the elasticity of cell membranes, bursting with just LIQUID (protoplasm), but increasing its volume! Also, of course, the effect of antifreeze.

Faciant meliora potentes.

5 XI 2024