Curdlan gum is tasteless and produces retortable freezable food elastic gels. It is insoluble in cold water a but aqueous suspensions plasticize and briefly dissolve before producing reversible gels (that is, curdling, hence its name) on heating to around 55 °C [504]. Heating at higher temperatures produces more resilient irreversible gels, which then remain on cooling, by the aggregation of the triple-helical structures and syneresis. The 'curds' consist of mixtures of single and triple helices. Salts tend to prevent curdlan from gelling and their presence weakens the final gels