Coop ice cream cone resists melting for over 90 minutes at room temperature

A standard Coop ice cream cone showed almost no signs of melting after 90 minutes at room temperature, according to a test conducted by Finnish broadcaster Yle.

The cone only began to visibly soften after 1.5 hours, with the first drops falling from a chocolate variant after nearly two hours. Coop’s strawberry cone remained largely unchanged for the same period, though the wafer started to bulge slightly.

In contrast, budget ice cream cones from Lidl began to collapse within an hour, with chunks breaking off, while Pirkan’s chocolate cone from K-stores was already soft when unwrapped. Pirkan’s strawberry cone, however, performed comparably to Coop’s, showing minimal melting after 60 minutes.

The test, inspired by social media claims about Coop’s slow-melting ice cream, compared the cheapest single cones from major Finnish supermarket chains—K-citymarket’s Pirkan, S-group’s Coop, and Lidl’s Gelatelli—priced between €0.59 and €0.69. All were removed from a freezer simultaneously and placed in a 23°C room.

Anu Hopia, a food development research professor at the University of Turku, explained that the stability of modern ice cream depends on a combination of factors. Fat, which remains mostly solid at room temperature, helps maintain the foam structure, while proteins from dairy products strengthen it. Stabilisers and thickeners slow down melting by making the liquid more viscous, and emulsifiers prevent water and fat from separating. Sugar content also plays a role—higher sugar levels can both slow freezing and speed up melting, depending on the recipe.

Hopia noted that most tested products contained typical stabilisers like carob bean gum and guar gum, derived from plant seeds. She emphasised that no single factor explains the results, but rather the precise balance of ingredients.