CHOCOLATE SCIENTIST

Evening Star, Issue 21077, 14 April 1932, Page 2

CHOCOLATE SCIENTIST

WHY “SOFT CENTRES" BURST LIFETIME INVESTIGATION Scientists have recently announced a discovery which will enable British chocolates to keep their pristine freshness while foreign chocolates look stale and musty (writes a correspondent). Few people know that chocolates are an object of serious scientific study. There is, in fact, an important Research Association with laboratories and a miniature factory at Camden Town (almost under the shadow of Holloway Gaol) devoted wholly to the study of chocolates, confectionery, and jam. When I visited the laboratories to hear the story of this new discovery, I found white-coated scientists probing the interiors of chocolate biscuits. Others were measuring, with tho aid of complicated electrical devices, the acidity of fruit juice. _ Another was carefully boiling sweets in a small copper vessel over a Bunsen burner. —Chocolates That “Bloom.” The director of the body rejoicing in the name of the British Association of Research for Cocoa, Chocolate, Sugar, Confectionery, and Jam Trades (which is supported by the manufacturers themselves, and receives help from the British Government’s Department of Scientific and Industrial Research) explained to me the problem of “bloom.” Chocolates, he said, sometimes look stale within a few days of their birth. A greyish coating settles over the surface and the beauty of the chocolate is seriously blemished. Scientists got to work and found that “bloom” was due to a film of minute fat crystals. They also found why this film was formed, and laid down a set of conditions during manufacture which prevented its appearance. These,instructions are now being followed by all the leading British manufacturers, and chocolates no longer bloom in their boxes—always provided that they avoid very high temperature during storage or transport. “We were gratified to see a letter m a foreign paper recently,” Mr Macara told me, “saying that the British evidently had some trade secret which avoided ‘bloom.’ The writer had noticed that British chocolates exported to the Argentine were free from this defect, and that our manufacturers were finding this a considerable trade advantage.” —Why Do Soft Centres Burst?— Chocolates with soft centres —known to the trade as “ fondants’’—have a little weakness. They sometimes burst. This is another serious scientific problem. Like the bloom bother, it has now been solved, and the bang of the “fondants” is no longer heard in the factory. “ Fondants ” are crystallised in syrup which tends to get discoloured after it has been used once or twice. The Camden Town experts have found a way of preventing this so that the syrup can be used repeatedly without discolouration. This saves the industry—a very important one in Britain — large sums. Ultra-violet rays are used in a modern laboratory to probe tho inner mysteries of the bull’s eye and the m'arron glace. I was shown a row of test tubes being bathed in these penetrating rays. They are used to find out whether certain substances in manufactured food aro quite genuine or whether they are no better than they should be. Genuine fats, for example, give a pale golden fluorescence; but their substitutes may give a pale bluo or opal-like fluorescence under the violet rays. —Help For Empire Producers. — These chocolate scientists of Camden Town are helping Empire producers as well as British manufacturers. Over half the world's supply of cacao (the correct name for raw cocoa) came from the Gold Coast, and large quantities are grown in Trinidad, Nigeria, and other countries. One of the present tasks of science is to improve the quality of cacao, which often suffers severely from mould and insect attacks. Chemists and mycologists are at work in West Africa trying to_ reduce moulds by improving conditions of drying and storage. Entomologists, armed with fumigating apparatus, meet the cargoes as they arrive at the London and Liverpool docks to wage war on tho cocoa moth, Ephestia, which attacks the raw beans in warehouses ami factories.

The importance of tin’s work is such that the Empire Marketing Board has

established at Slough a Stored Proructs Research Laboratory to study these and other stowawayss who sneak free hoard and lodging in raw foodstuffs, New methods of fumigation for cacao were recently tried out in barges in the Thames with considerable success. The quality of cacao has already improved noticeably since science was called in. The importance of this work can be explained in one word—price. If scientific methods of controlling faults in the raw products are successful, they will ultimately mean that a better price can be paid to producers for these goods. —Candied Peel Problems. — In the little experimental factory attached to tho laboratories, all sorts of improvements are being tested. Citron peels, for instance, are at present imported chiefly from foreign countries. Barrels of peel give testimony to the studies which have been undertaken to find tho best and cheapest methods of preserving peel which Empire countries might supply. But Jie Camden Town staff is not only concerned with why sweeties go to the bad. Jam-making is another study. Jam sometimes ferments as a result of tho growth of yeasts. Ways and means of nipping yeasts in the bud have been worked out. Chemists are at work in another section on a study of pectin, a by-product -of fruit used to make, jams and jellies set firmly. Another question which scientists looked into, at the manufacturers’ request, was whether any use could be made of unwanted fruit stones. Sausage rolls and bottled tongues also como under the eagle eye of Mr Macara’s staff. Better methods of preserving mincemeat and helping sausages to keep their youth are already to the credit of tho association. But I could find no one looking into the composition of hot dogs—or even taking the gilt off the gingerbread.