This invention relates to a food product and a method of making a food product.
The type of food product to which this invention is directed can be referred to as a settable dessert or a dessert product or it sometimes can be referred to as a mousse but while being similar the product of this invention is in fact none of these although for convenience it will be referred to as a dessert type product.
Many dessert type products are available in ready-to-use form but these have limitations either in relation to their long keeping ability, their ability to be frozen and refrozen without losing their structure and/or their ability to accept and integrate with fruit products which may have high acidity without losing their structure. Furthermore such existing commercial dessert type products do not have a richness or quality taste to be used directly in high class restaurants or to be sold in shops as a high class dessert.
It is an object of this invention to provide a food product and a method of manufacture of a food product generally of dessert type which at least to some extent reduces one or more of the problems expressed above or provides the public with a useful alternative.
This invention in one form can be said to reside in a method of making a food product which comprises the steps of aerating while cold one or more of the ingredients selected from cream, thickened cream, artificial cream or cream cheese to an extent that there is by reason of aeration a substantial overrun of the original volume of the selected ingredients, then adding dissolved gelatine as a hot solution to the cold aerated ingredients and mixing the aerated product with the hot gelatine solution and then allowing the resultant mixture to set.
In preference the method includes adding further ingredients selected at least from sugar, flavouring, fruit, fruit juice and water.
In preference the method can be further characterised in that the extent of overrun is within the range of from 10% to 40% of the volume of the original unaerated volume.
It is sometimes difficult to get up to 40% overrun but approximately 25% overrun is found to be ideal.
Best methods of manufacture of a food product in accord with this invention will now be given it being emphasised that the specific performance is not intended to illustrate the only way in which the invention can be achieved.
It will be useful to discuss the invention in general before the specific description will be given.
It has been previous conventional practice not to add hot gelatine solution to a cold aerated mix. I think this was on the presumption that such a step would result in a collapse of the aerated mix. What I have found instead is that with careful selection of quantities and proportions that the gelatine can set in a way which is different to anything I have previously known and there are significant advantages from this different result.
I think that the gelatine solution will initially follow the path of the existing cold ingredients which flow around the air bubbles. If the gelatine sets before the aeration collapses then the gelatine will have to have set with a structure that may resemble a fractured sponge so that the gelatine may be sinuous and tortuous.
In other words by introducing a hot (approximately 80 degrees Centigrade) gelatine solution into the aerated form of the cold (approximately 10 degrees Centigrade after the hot gelatine solution is added) mix of cream or cream like materials means that the gelatine while still unset can be distributed so as to follow the cellular shapes of the aerated materials and as such when it sets its structure will be perhaps sinuous and tortuous as a result.
This different structure of set gelatine from our experiments offers a number of advantages. If the resultant product is frozen then if as would be expected the liquid components of the mixture expand upon being frozen but with the body structure of the gelatine being sinuous and tortuous this means that such an action may not, unlike a homogenous structure, be broken into small fragments that will not subsequently interlink. There can still be after the product has thawed a connected structure of sinuous lengths of the gelatine which hold together in a connected way because of the tortuous shape of these. This is at this stage a theory as to the reason why this invention provides a useful result.
The method of the invention is more stable than other similar products in the presence of fruit or fruit juices. I believe this may be because the gelatine will not be so fractured after setting as can be the case with other forms of manufacture and as such the material is more chemically resistant against enzyme or acid attack.
In this specification reference to the word "hot" is intended as a reference to a temperature that would be considered as hot to those working in this field and comprises a temperature of liquid above which a person would not comfortably leave their hand in the liquid. This temperature is at a minimum about 48.degree. Centigrade and any temperature above this would be hot for the purposes of this specification.