The Manufacture of Chocolate and other Cacao PreparationsZipperer, Paul
Science
The Manufacture of Chocolate and other Cacao Preparations
Zipperer, Paul
Cacao; Chocolate; Cocoa
Especially is this noticeable in carelessly dried beans, in which
the cotyledon tissue is of a dirty brown or yellow colour instead of
being brown or violet; the pigment here is not restricted to separate
cells but has the appearance of having penetrated into the contiguous
albuminous cells. The bean contains 2·6-5 percent of the crude
cacao-red; it is soluble in alcohol and in ether and partly so in hot
water, and is completely extracted from the bean by weak acetic acid.
The crude cacao-red can be determined quantitatively by precipitating
its solution with lead acetate, decomposing the lead precipitate with
sulphuretted hydrogen and evaporating the filtrate containing the
cacao-red to dryness.
The aqueous extract of the beans, which contains the cacao-red, is
coloured greenish brown by alkalis, red by acids; acetates give a
grey to yellowish colour; tincture of iodine, stannous chloride and
mercurous nitrate give a rose to brown precipitate. Iron and copper
salts produce grey precipitates which gradually become brown to black.
Gelatine solution, containing alum, and albumin give copious yellow
precipitates.
Stains produced on linen by the colouring matter of cacao-red can
be removed by treatment with hot water and finally bleaching with a
solution of sulphurous acid.
4. ~Theobromine.~
All those materials which are regarded as stimulants, like coffee, tea,
cacao, tobacco etc., owe their action to peculiar nerve stimulating
bodies, which are present only in small quantity in the seeds or leaves
of the respective plants and are termed by chemists alkaloids and
diureides.
The physiologically active constituents of tea, coffee and cacao are
considered, even up to to-day, by many authors as alkaloids or organic
bases and especially ranked among the xanthine or purine bases. Recent
investigations, however, separate these substances from the alkaloids
in the strict sense and comprise them within a particular group of
urea derivatives under the designation of ureides; the ureides of tea,
coffee and cacao representing two molecules of urea, they are to be
qualified as “diureides
A bitter substance in the cacao bean had already been observed by
Schrader, but Woscressensky[53] in 1841 was the first to isolate the
diureide, theobromine.
Theobromine is found in the unfermented and fermented beans in two
forms; as free theobromine, which has been eliminated from the
glucoside by the ferment in the drying and fermenting processes, and in
combination with glucose and cacao-red as a glucoside, from which it
can only be separated by chemical means.
Theobromine stands in near relation to caffeine, the diureide of tea
and coffee, as will be seen from their chemical formulae—in which
theobromine is shown to contain one methyl group CH_{3}, less, its
place being taken by an hydrogen atom;
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