What Is PAC in Gelato? PAC & POD Explained, Step by Step

PAC (potere anti-congelante, Italian for anti-freezing power) measures how much the sugars in a gelato recipe lower its freezing point: the higher the PAC, the softer the gelato at the same temperature. POD (potere dolcificante, sweetening power) measures how sweet those same sugars taste. Both are scored against table sugar, which is 100. A dairy gelato aims for a PAC of 22–32 and a POD of 14–21 per 100 g of mix; a sorbet runs higher on both.

That's the whole idea. The rest of this guide shows where the numbers come from, works them out by hand for a real recipe, and shows the one sugar swap that makes gelato softer without making it sweeter. Every number here is what GelatoLator shows for the same recipe, so you can check each step as you go.

PAC and POD in One Minute

Gelato is mostly water. When it freezes, the sugars dissolved in that water make it harder for ice to form, so part of the water stays liquid even at −12 °C. That liquid part is what makes a scoop soft. More dissolved sugar (or the right sugar) means more unfrozen water and a softer gelato.

The trouble is that sugars don't all behave alike. Gram for gram, dextrose fights freezing almost twice as hard as table sugar, yet tastes only about two thirds as sweet. So "how much sugar is in it" can't tell you how soft or how sweet a recipe will be. PAC and POD can, because each sugar carries its own factor for each:

These are GelatoLator's target bands, per 100 g of mix. Some recipe books and spreadsheets quote PAC per kilo instead, which makes the same numbers ten times bigger: a PAC of 26 per 100 g is the same recipe as 260 per kg. If a forum post says "aim for 240–280", that's the same target written on the other scale.

Why Some Sugars Fight Freezing Harder

Freezing-point depression depends on how many dissolved particles are in the water, not on how heavy they are. Dextrose and fructose are single sugar molecules; sucrose is two of them joined together. So a gram of dextrose puts nearly twice as many particles into the water as a gram of sucrose, and lowers the freezing point nearly twice as much. Bigger molecules, like the long chains in glucose syrup, do the opposite: lots of body, little anti-freezing power.

Sweetness is a separate property of each molecule, which is why the two numbers move independently. That independence is the useful part. It lets you tune softness and sweetness one at a time.

The Sugar Table: POD and PAC for Common Sweeteners

Every value below is per 100 g of the ingredient as you buy it, water included, from GelatoLator's ingredient database. That's why the syrups score lower than you might expect: some of each spoonful is water.

Two things stand out. First, the milk rows: lactose is a sugar, so every gram of milk and milk powder adds a little PAC. In a dairy gelato that adds up to more than you'd think, as the worked example below shows. Second, allulose sits exactly where anhydrous dextrose does (PAC 190, POD 70), which is why it's the most interesting low-sugar option. We're testing it in the kitchen in November, and it gets an article of its own.

How Is PAC Calculated? A Worked Example

Here's the method, and it's the same for POD:

1. For each ingredient, multiply its weight in grams by its PAC factor and divide by 100. That's its PAC points.
2. Add up the points for the whole recipe.
3. Divide by the total weight of the recipe and multiply by 100. That's the PAC per 100 g of mix.

Let's do it for our Fior di Latte, a plain milk-and-cream gelato that weighs 999 g:

Now divide by the batch weight:

• PAC = 230.7 ÷ 999 × 100 = 23.1
• POD = 144.4 ÷ 999 × 100 = 14.5

Both sit inside the dairy bands (PAC 22–32, POD 14–21), which is why this recipe scoops well and doesn't taste cloying. Load it into GelatoLator and you'll see the same 23.1 and 14.5 in the totals row.

Look at where the PAC came from. The milk, cream and milk powder together contribute 63.8 of the 230.7 points, more than a quarter, and none of it from sugar you added. That's the lactose. It's why a recipe that looks under-sugared on paper can still balance, and why adding milk powder to fix low solids also nudges PAC up.

From PAC to Serving Temperature

A PAC number on its own is abstract. What you actually want to know is: at what temperature will this scoop nicely? GelatoLator estimates it with a simple rule used across the gelato trade: divide the PAC by 2 and put a minus sign in front for a dairy gelato (divide by 2.5 for a sorbet, which is built differently).

For the Fior di Latte, 23.1 ÷ 2 gives a serving temperature of about −11.5 °C. That's a gelateria display case. A home freezer runs at −18 °C or colder, so the same gelato comes out of it firmer than it's meant to be served. That's not a fault in the recipe; it's the temperature. Leave the tub on the counter for 5–10 minutes before scooping, and it softens to where the PAC says it should be. (The timings for every stage, from heating the base to serving, are in How to Make Gelato at Home.)

If you'd rather scoop straight from a home freezer, you need a higher PAC, nearer the top of the band, which means more of the high-PAC sugars. Push it too far, though, and the gelato is soupy in the bowl.

Softer Without Sweeter: The Dextrose Swap

Say the Fior di Latte is too firm for you. There are two ways to raise its PAC, and they taste very different:

Both changes make the gelato equally softer. Only one makes it sweeter. Adding sucrose pushes POD up by 2.4 points, which you'll taste; swapping sucrose for dextrose actually brings POD down a point, because dextrose is less sweet. This is the most useful trick in gelato balancing, and it's the reason professional recipes use more than one sugar.

The same logic runs in reverse. If a recipe tastes too sweet but has the right softness, swap some sucrose for a sugar with lower POD and similar PAC, or move some of the sweetness into glucose syrup for body.

Alcohol: PAC With No POD at All

Alcohol takes the dextrose trick to the extreme. It lowers the freezing point far more than any sugar, gram for gram roughly seven times as much as sucrose, and adds no sweetness. A 40% spirit like rum scores PAC 247 and POD 0 per 100 g as it comes from the bottle.

Add 30 g of rum to the 999 g Fior di Latte and the numbers move like this:

• PAC goes from 23.1 to 29.6
• POD drops slightly, from 14.5 to 14.0, because the batch got heavier without getting sweeter
• Serving temperature goes from −11.5 °C to −14.8 °C

That's a bigger jump in softness than the whole dextrose swap, from a couple of tablespoons. It's also why boozy gelato goes wrong so easily: at about 40 g of rum per kilo, this base reaches the top of the dairy band (PAC 32), and past that it stays too soft to hold a scoop. If you add a spirit, cut back some of the dextrose or other high-PAC sugar to make room for it. Sweet liqueurs like Kahlua or amaretto bring sugar as well as alcohol, so they raise both numbers.

Flavourings count too: vanilla extract is about 35% alcohol by volume, so a teaspoon (about 5 g) adds roughly 1 point of PAC to a 1 kg batch. GelatoLator counts it.

Why Sorbet Runs Higher

A sorbet's targets sit well above a gelato's: PAC 30–42 and POD 22–28. With no fat or milk solids to give it body, a sorbet relies on sugar for almost all of its structure, so it needs more of it to stay scoopable. That's also why the serving-temperature rule divides by 2.5 instead of 2: a sorbet at the same PAC is firmer than a gelato.

Fruit adds its own sugars, mostly fructose and glucose, which carry high PAC. Leave them out of the count and the sorbet ends up harder or sweeter than you planned. Why Is My Sorbet Too Hard? works through the sorbet version of this, from the all-sucrose trap to a balanced recipe.

What PAC Doesn't Tell You

PAC is the best single predictor of softness, but it's not the whole story:

• It only counts what's dissolved. Fat, protein and stabilizer don't lower the freezing point, but they change how hard a gelato feels. A high-fat gelato and a low-fat one at the same PAC won't scoop the same.
• Free water still matters. A recipe can hit its PAC and still go icy if total solids are low, because there's too much water left to freeze into crystals. That's covered in Why Is My Gelato Icy?
• PAC ÷ 2 is an estimate. The more exact method models how much of the water is frozen at each temperature. For a home batch the simple rule lands close enough to choose a serving temperature, and it's the rule GelatoLator uses.

Put the Numbers to Work

You don't have to do this arithmetic by hand every time. That's what the calculator is for: add your ingredients and GelatoLator works out PAC, POD and the serving temperature as you type, and shows any number that's out of range in red. Doing it once by hand, though, is what makes the red numbers make sense.

For the other numbers on the balance panel (fat, milk solids, total solids, stabilizer), see How GelatoLator Works. To take a recipe you found online and fix its PAC, POD and everything else, the recipe-conversion guide walks through it step by step. And for two bases with every number already in the green, start from The Ultimate Vanilla Gelato Base.