Hard Fats Improve the Physicochemical and Thermal Properties of Seed Fats for Applications in Confectionery Products

Abstract

Hard fats, obtained from liquid oils by different fat modification techniques, are composed of highmelting-point triacylglycerols (TAGs) that can be used as alternatives to improve the functional characteristics of lipid systems. These low-cost industrial products are regarded as raw materials in lipid technology. They can behave as modifiers in crystallization processes, acting as preferential nuclei for ordering crystal lattices and inducing specific polymorphic patterns because of their homogeneous TAGs. Adding hard fats, such as mango, illipe, kokum, sal, shea, rambutan, palm oil, palm kernel oil, and sunflower oil, into other oils is beneficial as it increases their compatibility for uses in fat-based products, especially confectionery products. The addition of hard fats has a significant effect on the rate of crystallization, significantly decreasing the induction time for nucleation and leading to a higher hardness, and increases the thermal resistance for applications in fat-based products. The aim of this article is to review the changes in the physicochemical and thermal properties of hard fats and their mixtures obtained by fractionation, enzymatic interesterification and blending, which broaden their applicability in the food industry.

Physicochemical properties of mango kernel fats extracted from different mango varieties cultivated in Sabah, Malaysia

“…The proportion of the major saturated and unsaturated fatty acids obtained in this study were comparable with those of cocoa butter (33.30%-40.20%) (Gunstone, Harwood, & Padley, 1994;Jahurul et al, 2019), illipe butter (39.50%-43.20%) (Minifie, 2012) (Bebarta et al, 2013) and sal butter (5.91%-6.70%) (Bebarta et al, 2013;Kumar et al, 2016;Reddy & Prabhakar, 2007). The three MKFs had the proportion of linoleic acid that similar to shea butter (5.50%-7.79%) (Adomako, 1977;Gunstone et al, 1994) but different from cocoa butter (2.60%-3.50%) (Gunstone et al, 1994;Jahurul et al, 2019) and the other CBEs.…”

“…Surprisingly, the results of AV were very much higher than that of cocoa butter (0.42-2.11 mg KOH/g) (Jahurul et al, 2019). The AV of the three MKFs were also moderately higher than that of palm oil (4.62 mg KOH/g) (Li et al, 2012) and kokum butter (4.90 mg KOH/g) but lower than that of illipe butter (7.73 mg KOH/g) (Minifie, 2012) and sal butter (7.60 mg KOH/g) (Kumar et al, 2016), however, within the range of shea butter (1.79-13.40 mg KOH/g) (Adomako, 1977;Honfo et al, 2013).…”

“…Moreover, a possible explanation for the variability in these results was due to the nature of the different fats. The ranges for SMP of the three MKFs were in lines with cocoa butter (25.0-35.0°C) (Jahurul et al, 2019), palm oil (31.1-39.2°C), and sal butter (32.4°C) but higher than illipe butter (30.0°C) (Minifie, 2012) and lower than kokum butter (39.0-43.0°C) as well as shea butter (36.7-37.4°C) (Adomako, 1977).…”

“…The MKFs from the three varieties also had similar IV with palm oil (47.0-55.8 g I 2 /100 g) (Li et al, 2012) and were in the range of shea butter (36.6-65.0 g I 2 /100 g) (Adomako, 1977;Gunstone et al, 1994;Honfo, Akissoe, Linnemann, Soumanou, & Van Boekel, 2013) but higher than cocoa butter (34.0-38.4 g I 2 /100 g) (Jahurul et al, 2019), illipe butter (23.0-38.0 g I 2 /100 g) (Minifie, 2012;Rahman, Basri, Rahman, Rahman, & Salleh, 2011), and sal butter (32.1-41.0 g I 2 /100 g) (Kumar et al, 2016). These fats have low IV implied that they have higher content of saturated fatty acids, higher degree of hardness, better oxidation resistance, and greater storage stability than the MKFs (Mas'ud et al, 2017).…”

“…The quality of the MKFs can be preserved by avoiding the storage of the fat from light and air exposure in order to prevent peroxide formation. Interestingly, the results of PV were much lower than those of palm oil (3.22 meq O 2 /kg) (Li et al, 2012), sal butter (3.8-4.0 meq O 2 /kg) (Kumar et al, 2016), shea butter (1.79-13.40 meq O 2 /kg) (Honfo et al, 2013), and cocoa butter (1.78-1.80 meq O 2 /kg) (Jahurul et al, 2019). It can be thus suggested that the three MKFs had better quality and more preferable to be used as CBEs.…”