Photo: Grant Cornett

Air

Call this stuff Airy Queen—around 40 percent of it is air. DQ pumps up the volume to give its soft-serve that marshmallowy quality (it also provides more servings from a given amount of milk). People seem to like it—soft-serve represents nearly 70 percent of ice cream desserts sold at fast-food joints in the US.

Nonfat milk and milk fat

Do they really take the fat out and then put it back in? Not quite. This wording is a bit of FDA nonsense enabling DQ suppliers to use almost any milk product—cream, condensed, skim, whole, nonfat, dry—and still end up with a 5 percent fat base.

Sugar

Legend has it that ice cream was popularized in the 17th century by the chef for King Charles I. Was it the richness or the novel coldness that made ice cream a hit? We're betting it was actually the sugar, which causes an increase in dopamine, the brain's pleasure-anticipation signal.

Just like cocaine!

Polysorbate 80

Polysorbates gained popularity after World War II, when people were excited about a future in which they would eat numbered chemicals instead of food. PS 80 is made by mixing a derivative of sorbitol, a glucose alcohol, with fatty oleic acid. It's an emulsifier that penetrates the boundary between fat and water molecules in the soft-serve to keep them from separating.

Vitamin A palmitate

More FDA shenanigans. When you extract the fat from milk, you extract the fat-soluble vitamin A as well. The Feds make milk processors fortify their low-fat cow juice with replacement vitamin A. When DQ uses low-fat milk in its soft-serve, this new vitamin A comes along with it. A pain, really, since milk fat and palmitate tend to color the soft-serve a delicate shade of yellow. How to keep things white? More air!

Coconut Oil

The magic phase shifter, used in the base of the chocolate coating. Coconut oil solidifies at a relatively high 76 degrees. When the icy soft-serve is dipped into the coating, the coconut oil crystallizes, forming a 1- to 2-mm-thick shell. In about 30 seconds, as the shell approaches the temperature of the soft-serve, the contracting power of cold causes it to become brittle or crack—features that DQ knows the public loves.

Partially Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil

Some makers add up to 10 percent vegetable oil to maintain enough plasticity for the coating to cover the soft-serve before solidifying.

Cocoa

Real, honest-to-goodness cocoa ... just not very much of it. Technically, the coating doesn't meet FDA requirements of chocolate as a stand- alone food, so DQ calls it "chocolate flavored."

Soy Lecithin

Lecithin is an emulsifier that was originally extracted from egg yolk (lekithos in Greek), but the version here is derived from soybeans. It's a collection of triglycerides and lipids that lowers the viscosity of the coating mix and makes it flow more smoothly, ensuring a perfectly formed shell of chocolatey- ish goodness.