FUNCTIONAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL PROPERTIES OF THE FOOD ADDITIVE MAGNETOFOOD IN THE PRODUCTION OF MARSHMALLOWS

Abstract

Production of whipped confectionery (marshmallows, pressed fruit paste, sweets with light-textured centres) is a complex process difficult to control. To expand and modernise their production, it is necessary to find simpler technologies, both resource- and energy- saving, to increase the stability of the heterogeneous dispersed system, and to improve the quality of finished products. In this respect, applying food additives of the nanometer range in technology looks very promising due to their unique physicochemical parameters and their many functional and technological properties. In the paper, it is suggested to solve the problem of stabilising the polyphase structure of whipped confectionery products and to form their quality by using the food additive Magnetofood based on ferrous and ferric oxides (FeO×Fe2O3). Magnetofood is ultrafine powder with a particle size of
 ~80 nm. It has a high functional and technological potential: large specific surface and a set of useful properties (the additive is surface- active, with complex-forming, sorption, and stabilising properties). This allows us to recommend Magnetofood as an additive with a complex action to improve the quality and extend the shelf life of sugar confections like fruit paste and fruit jelly products, in particular, white and pink marshmallows. It has been found that addition of Magnetofood in the form of an aqueous suspension at the stage of swelling and dissolution of the gelling agent improves the shape and consistency, reduces the density of the foam structure by 1.12–1.15 times, reduces the amount of gelling agent by 10–12% for agar and by 7–9% for pectin, increases the mechanical strength of marshmallows by 11.5–12.6% for agar and by 8.2-9.1% for pectin. Besides, the foaming ability of egg white increases by 1.14-1.4 times (with constant foam stability (99±1)% due to the stabilising effect of Magnetofood nanoparticles), and the thixotropic property of the gel structure becomes 1.4–1.5 times as much