Potatoes: Chemical compounds and usage

Potato is the fourth largest food crop in the world and is very important for human consumption. Potato has been a staple crop and essential component of western Latin American food systems for thousands of years.

This staple crop contains essential amino acids, vitamins, and minerals, and is thus reported to play a significant role in human nutrition. Depending on the variety, potatoes can be a valuable source of minerals such as potassium, magnesium and phosphorus, and also of dietary antioxidants.

Many varieties of potatoes offer nutritional quantities of ascorbic acid (up to 42 mg/100 g), potassium (up to 693.8 mg/100 g), dietary fiber (up to 3.3%), and other healthy bioactive components, with lesser amounts of protein (0.85%–4.2%).

A high content of vitamin C enhances iron absorption, and high vitamin C / high iron potato varieties could significantly contribute to achieve the daily vitamin C and iron requirements.

The worldwide utilization of potatoes is moving from fresh to processed potato products such as mashed and canned potatoes, fries, chips, and ready meals.

Food related uses are abundant and follow different primary processes including boiling, steaming, freeze-drying, drying, and fermentation. These uses alter the biochemical composition of the potato and frequently enhance storability to ensure year-round food availability. In addition, the potato is used as medicine and animal fodder and for festive or ritual purposes.

Currently, less than 50% of potatoes are consumed fresh; the rest are used for processed potato products, animal feed, and seed tubers for the next season’s crops. Also, the food processing industry benefits more from French fries and chips than fresh potatoes.
Potatoes: Chemical compounds and usage

Vanillin as food flavor

Vanillin has a characteristic strong vanilla-like odor with a very sweet taste. Vanillin is a very important flavor used throughout the industry and its history of authenticity testing covers numerous decades.

Derived naturally from vanilla beans it has been produced from other sources as well. It is widely occurs in nature; it has been reported in the essential oil of Java citronella, in benzoin, Peru balsam, clove bud oil, and chiefly vanilla pods.

At present, only o.2 percent of this compound is extracted from beans (Vanilla planifolia) and the remainder is produced synthetically in the world flavor market.

In flavor formulations, vanillin is used widely either as a sweetener or as a flavor enhancer, not only in imitation vanilla flavor, but also in butter, chocolate and all types of fruit flavors, root beer, cream soda, etc.

Vanilla ice cream is used to make milkshakes, sundaes, floats and other types of desserts such as cakes or pies.

Ice cream and chocolate are among the largest outlets for vanillin in the food and confectionary industries, and their consumption is many times greater than that of the perfume and fragrance industry.

Vanilla flavor has ignited the imagination and interest of many scientists for many decades. The growing awareness for natural products has increased the demand for natural vanillin.
Vanillin as food flavor

Fructose as a sweetener

Fructose is the sweetest monosaccharide and has a limited use as a specialty sweetener. Most fructose used to sweetened commercial products is obtained from corn, not squeezed from fruit a process that is impractical for mass production.
Fructose is so efficient in its sweetening power that is common in commercially prepared foods today as sucrose.

It is a sweetener that is found naturally in fresh fruit and honey. It cans sweeten with fewer calories than sugar, is easier on the teeth and enters the bloodstream less rapidly.

Fructose is a monosaccharide, with five carbon furanose ring structure rather than the six carbon pyranose ring structure of glucose. It sweetness ranges from 120 to 160, varying from solid through various concentrations in aqueous solution.

Increasing the fructose content reduces viscosity; the level of sweetness increases. High levels of fructose limit the crystallization risk of the syrups, because fructose crystallizes only with difficulty.

Major uses are as sweetener in carbonated soft drinks and as sweetener/ preservative/ phase stabilizer in canned and frozen foods and preserves.

Crystalline fructose, the most expensive sweetener, appears in reduced caloric formulations and dietetic foods because its sweetness/caloric ratio is higher than that of sucrose.

The sweetener in commercial products is usually not fructose alone but a combination of fructose, glucose and other sugar.

In the mid-1980s, 55% high fructose corn syrup was adopted by the carbonated beverage industry and became prominent sweetener in soft drink. It was developed thirty years ago as a cheap alternative to sucrose, or table sugar.

High fructose corn syrup of HFCS is a mixture of fructose and glucose. The two most common mixtures are HFCS-55, which contains 55% fructose and 42% glucose, and HFCS-42, which contains 42% fructose and 53% glucose.

It’s cheap to make, tastes sweeter than sugar so manufacturer can use less of it.
Fructose as a sweetener 

What is salad oil?

Salad oil is that kind of oil which is used in the preparation of food, especially salad. It is generally called either sweet-oil or salad oil.

The term salad oil is generally reserved for those products that remain substantially liquid at refrigerator temperatures. It remains clear at refrigerator temperatures.

Salad oil is clear, light colored vegetable oil. It can be poured, metered and pumped. Salad oils are made from canola, olive, cottonseed, sunflower, peanut, safflower and form partially hydrogenated soybean oil.

Products labeled as salad oil have been winterized – exposed to low temperatures for a period of time and then filtered.  This keeps them clear when they are stored in the refrigerator.

Sunflower and sesame seed oils are good natural salad oils, but they are not produced in great quantities as at the present times. Sunflower is a premium salad oil because of its light color, bland flavor and a high concentration of linoleic acid.

The primary use for salad oils is for making salad dressing. Traditional salad dressing, some of which are emulsified, consists of a two phase system of oil and water with 55-65 percent oil.

A salad oil coats the salad ingredients, spreading the flavor of the dressing that improves the palatability of the salad.

Other uses include deep frying, pan-frying, griddling and some types of baking. Salad oil also used in mayonnaise and thick salad dressing

Salad oil may be used as cooking oil, but cooking oil cannot be used as a salad oil.
What is salad oil?

What is cocoa powder?

The word cacao comes from the word kakawa from language of the Olmecs people and was already used around 1000 BC.

Cacao is deliciously rich and bitter. Raw cacao beans can be ground and used in lieu of cocoa powder or chocolate. There are two basic types, dutched and natural and each is available with fat contents within a range of about 8-32%.

The powder should be manufactured with well-winnowed nibs from properly fermented and dried cocoa beans.

Cocoa powder is a valuable flavoring material in baked goods and desserts as well as the basis of hot chocolate drinks. It is made from fermented, roasted and ground cacao beans.

Like chocolate, cocoa powder is produce form liquor by removing some of the fat. This is carried out by hydraulic pressing of the liquor, the quantity of fat removed being carefully controlled.

The commercial powder varies in color and flavor, dependent upon the quality the beans used, the degree of roasting and precise method.

The good quality cocoa powder has the following characteristics:
*PH: 5.6 to 7.1 dependent upon whether or not the cocoa beans were processed with alkali.
*Fat: about 24% and not less than 22%
*Moisture: 3-4%

The higher the fat content the more rounded is the flavor. General –purpose manufacturing cocoa as used in dough, biscuit creams or as the basis for coatings has fat content of between 9 and 12%, may be rising a little higher, but cocoa for use in beverages is richer in fat, usually not less than 22%.
What is cocoa powder?

Cocoa powder usage and consumption

Consumption has increased more than tenfold since the turn of the twentieth century, commercial cacao cultivation having spread around the world in a belt within twenty degrees of the equator and the varieties of chocolate flavored confections having proliferated worldly.

Natural and Dutch process cocoa powder may be used interchange as long as there is no leavening in the recipe.

However, if a recipe calls for baking powder or baking soda, need to use the cocoa specified, otherwise, the texture and flavor of the pastry will suffer and the recipe may even fail.

The cocoa powder is made into a drink and can be added to milk, cakes and ice cream. The beans contain the stimulant alkaloid, theobromine (about 2.5 percent) and about 0.8 percent caffeine, but these quantities are reduced after processing.

General purpose manufacturing cocoa as used in doughs, biscuit creams or as the basis for coatings has a fat content of between 9 and 12%, may be rising a little higher.

Confections such as nougats, pastes and pralines also often use cocoa as a flavoring material.

The best way to heighten the flavor of cocoa powder is to blend it with boiling water before adding it to the recipe.

Cocoa differs from the other common beverages (coffee and tea) in that it has a marked nutritional composition, for example cocoa powder contains about 25 percent fat (saturated), 16 percent protein and 12 percent carbohydrate (about half are sugars).

Natural cocoa powder also known as non-alkalized cocoa powder is the classics American cocoa used of making chocolate cakes and brownies. Non-alkalized cocoa powder can be acidic and very assertive in flavor where alkalized is darker, milder in taste and more balanced.
Cocoa powder usage and consumption