EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTS OF ROASTING ON CHESTNUT FLOUR

Abstract

Due to healthy and organoleptic properties of the chestnuts, nowadays, food products obtained from these nuts are increasingly important and various traditional recipes with chestnuts have been rediscovered. A simple cake of the past times, appreciated by children but at present not very well-known, was prepared by pressing chestnut flour in a little metal container, which was then heated until the flour became lightly brown-coloured. For such a purpose a thimble for sewing was suitable. By this way, a little and crumbly solid product, with an unmistakable aroma, was obtained. It was the result of chemical and physical changes caused by heat in the chestnut flour, partly similar to the modifications which take place in other flours, such as the rice flour, by effect of heating and partly due to peculiar components present in the chestnut flour. In order to carry out a preliminary study on such modifications, pressed samples of whole chestnut flour were heated until beginning of the roasting in such a way to imitate the preparation of the above mentioned cake. In a similar way were treated samples of rice flour after the addition of solutions extracted from chestnut flour with hexane, ethyl acetate, ethanol, water. By comparing aromatic and chemical characteristics of the samples before and after heating, a qualitative, preliminary estimate was made both of the effects of roasting on particular components present in the chestnut flour and of the way to separate them from the flour.