The Manufacture of Chocolate and other Cacao PreparationsZipperer, Paul
Science
The Manufacture of Chocolate and other Cacao Preparations
Zipperer, Paul
Cacao; Chocolate; Cocoa
In addition to its use in the manufacture of certain cacao preparations
and for lubricating parts of machinery which come into contact with
the cacao etc. cacao fat is also used in perfumery and especially in
pharmacy for making suppositaries, ointments, etc., but it is of no
importance in soap making. As an edible fat, in the true sense of the
word, like ordinary butter or lard, cacao butter is not used. It has
been maintained by Benedikt[48] that when in the form of chocolate
it is as easily digestible in the human organism as milk fat, which
is generally regarded as offering most favourable conditions for
absorbtion in the intestinal canal. The digestibility of both fats
varies from 92·3 to 95·38 percent, and both, in this respect, stand
very near to cocoa-nut fat from which the solid glycerides have been
removed, and to ordinary butter, the former according to Bourot and
Jean.[49] being digestible to the extent of 98 and the latter 95·8
percent.
Cacao butter is obtained as a by-product in the preparation of cocoa
powder and in every country where cocoa powder is produced there
is always a large trade in the former article. That is, apart from
Germany, especially the case in Holland, where the monthly supply to
the Amsterdam market is so large that during 1899 one firm alone—Van
Houten—had 855 tons for sale. The average price of late years has
considerably increased, and is now about 64-73 cents per kilogramme.
3. ~Cacao-red or Pigment.~
The majority of investigators interested in the cacao bean have
assigned its peculiar aroma and taste to the cacao-red which it
develops. As previously pointed out, the young fresh bean is
colourless, the pigment forming later, as can be observed in many
vegetable colouring materials, such as oakand cinchona-red, madder,
indigo and kola-nut red (from Sterculia acuminata). As the later
investigations of Hilger[50] have shown, the fresh colourless cacao
bean contains a diastasic ferment, as well as a glucoside body, which
C. Schweitzer[51] has termed glocoside or cacaonin. The term glucoside
may be noted in passing as including those bodies, the greater number
of which occur in plants, and which by treatment with alkalis, acids
or ferments are split up into an indifferent body and a sugar,
generally glucose. These bodies may be chemically regarded as ethyl
derivatives of the respective sugars. When the ripe, white seeds are
dried, the cacao-glycoside is partly decomposed by the agency of the
above-mentioned diastasic ferment and formations of grape sugar, pure
non-nitrogenous cacao-red, together with theobromine and coffeine
ensue. These substances, and likewise a certain amount of undecomposed
cacao glycoside, can all be detected in the seed, which has by this
time acquired a brownish to violet colour.
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