Confectionery and Chocolate Engineering

Book excerpt: Confectionery and chocolate manufacture has been dominated by large-scale industrial processing for several decades. It is often the case though, that a trial and error approach is applied to the development of new products and processes, rather than verified scientific principles. Confectionery and Chocolate Engineering: Principles and Applications, Second edition, adds to information presented in the first edition on essential topics such as food safety, quality assurance, sweets for special nutritional purposes, artizan chocolate, and confectioneries. In addition, information is provided on the fading memory of viscoelastic fluids, which are briefly discussed in terms of fractional calculus, and gelation as a second order phase transition. Chemical operations such as inversion, caramelization, and the Maillard reaction, as well as the complex operations including conching, drying, frying, baking, and roasting used in confectionery manufacture are also described. This book provides food engineers, scientists, technologists and students in research, industry, and food and chemical engineering-related courses with a scientific, theoretical description and analysis of confectionery manufacturing, opening up new possibilities for process and product improvement, relating to increased efficiency of operations, the use of new materials, and new applications for traditional raw materials.