Abstract
Pasta with eggs added (generally termed “special pasta” for Italian legislation) is made by adding no less than 4 eggs without shells (or no less than 200 g of liquid or lyophilized egg product) per kilogram of semolina, as provided by law. In this work, to determine the final content of eggs added to dough, an analytical procedure was developed for the rapid analysis of the cholesterol content in the finished pastas. The proposed procedure was simpler, faster, and more accurate than that of official methods of analysis based on the gravimetric determination of sterols. Moreover, the determination of the quality of fat content in the special pasta (egg pasta in this case) allowed the evaluation of its origin, avoiding possible fraud resulting from the addition of foreign fat as an alternative to fat derived from eggs. In this new gas chromatographic procedure, the internal standard squalene for the quantification of cholesterol was used because a more polar GC capillary column was used (RTX 65 TG-HT) for the separation of sterols, rather than 5% phenyl methylsilicone. The ratio between cholesterol and squalene allowed for the determination of the number of eggs added, while from analysis of the same gas chromatogram, it was also possible to evaluate the composition of triglycerides in the fat contained in the pasta, allowing discrimination of foreign fats with respect to fats contained in eggs and therefore avoiding adulteration of pasta. The same analytical procedure was applied to the determination of cholesterol content in lyophilized yolk.
Highlights
Pasta is a popular food throughout the world and its consumption is rapidly increasing worldwide because of the simplicity of its preparation and its pleasant taste
The first aim of this study was to provide operators in the egg pasta industry with a standardized procedure, based on gas chromatography equipped with flame ionization detector (FID), to enable determination of the final content of eggs added to the dough via rapid analysis of cholesterol content, either in the finished pastas or in the egg product
The reference methods for the determination of the number of eggs in egg pasta were essentially based on measurement of the total sterol content because cholesterol is an animal steroid found in eggs, while β-sitosterol and campesterol are vegetable steroids present in flour and semolina
Summary
Pasta is a popular food throughout the world and its consumption is rapidly increasing worldwide because of the simplicity of its preparation and its pleasant taste. Is pasta that, in addition to containing water and durum wheat flour or semolina, makes use of other ingredients (eggs, vegetables, spices, etc.). This must be marketed with the term “pasta made from durum wheat flour or semolina” followed by the ingredient(s) used. A type of special pasta that meets additional requirements and must be marketed with the term “egg pasta” [5] Foods 2018, 7, 131 a product obtained from processing dough based on semolina flour and at least 4 whole eggs without shell (or the equivalent in egg liquid product or lyophilized product), with an egg ratio/flour ratio of 1/5 (e.g., 200 g of shell-less egg, or the equivalent in egg liquid product, per 1000 g of semolina).
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