Food or edible material: processes – compositions – and products – Products per se – or processes of preparing or treating... – Noncarbohydrate sweetener or composition containing same
Reexamination Certificate
1999-05-04
2004-06-01
Corbin, Arthur L. (Department: 1761)
Food or edible material: processes, compositions, and products
Products per se, or processes of preparing or treating...
Noncarbohydrate sweetener or composition containing same
C127S030000, C426S658000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06743456
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a new sweetening composition.
It also relates to the use of this sweetening composition for manufacturing boiled sugars, in particular plain boiled sugars, that is to say marketed without individual wrappings and as a flavour carrier.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Boiled sugars, also commonly called hard sweets, are solid and substantially amorphous confectionery products. They are obtained by the forced dehydration of carbohydrate syrups. Generally, the process involves boiling mixtures of powdered sucrose and concentrated syrups of starch hydrolysates in a ratio varying in the range approximately 40/60 to approximately 65/35 in commercial weight. These mixtures usually contain enough water to dissolve all the sucrose crystals. These mixtures are then boiled at 130° C.-150° C. at ambient pressure in order to evaporate most of the water, then the boiling process is finished under vaccum in order to lower the water content still further and to bring it to a value of generally less than 3%. The plastic material obtained in this way is then cooled to a temperature in the range 125° C. to 140° C., if it is to be cast into moulds, or to a temperature in the range 90° C. to 115° C. if the next stage is shaping on rollers or extrusion. At this stage, various substances may be added such as flavourings, colorants, acids, plant extracts, vitamins or pharmaceutically active ingredients. After shaping or casting the boiled material and after returning to ambient temperature, boiled sugars are obtained which have a texture and appearance similar to that of glass.
The basic market for boiled sugars is currently still made up of products described as “of sugar” prepared from non-hydrogenated carbohydrate syrups. Substantially amorphous boiled sugars described as “without sugar” or based on polyols are also available, these being obtained in exactly the same way as described above, but using hydrogenated carbohydrate syrups and boiling to a much higher temperature in order to dehydrate the heated material even more. These carbohydrate syrups are generally syrups of maltitol or hydrogenated isomaltulose in solution.
It is expected that boiled sugars are stable over the course of time, that is to say that they change as little as possible from the time they are manufactured until the time they are consumed, while remaining attractive products and pleasant to consume.
Unfortunately, boiled sugars are not stable products from a thermodynamic point of view. The extent to which they change depends basically on their compositions after manufacture, but also on the conditions under which they are stored.
In the first place, boiled sugars can become sticky during storage. If they are wrapped, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to remove the wrapping paper before eating them. They can also stick together in large clumps, which is even more annoying.
This problematic change towards a sticky and syrupy state is explained by surface effects and/or by internal effects.
Surface effects are due to the hygroscopic nature of boiled sugars. In fact it is known that boiled sugars, which are virtually anhydrous by essence, have equilibrium relative humidities which are always very low and are well below the usual ambient relative humidities during storage. This explains why water is inevitably taken up at the surface of the sweets when they are exposed and remain exposed to the air, as is the case, for example, with lollipops. When the amount of water absorbed is large enough, it tends to liquefy the surface of the sweets and to give them the characteristics of a syrup, that is to say in particular to give them a sticky character. This change seems to take place more rapidly when the boiled sugars have a low water content.
Internal effects, which thus involve not only the surface but the entire bulk of the sweet, have a thermal origin. More precisely, it is acknowledged that, if these events are to take place, the storage temperature has to be a little higher than the glass transition temperature of the boiled sugar. The concept which is referred to here is largely described in the excellent article “La transition vitreuse: incidences en technologie alimentaire” by M. Le Mestre and D. Simatos, published in I.A.A. of January/February, 1990. The glass transition temperature is the temperature at which, on heating, a glassy and solid boiled sugar becomes an amorphous syrupy liquid. It is well known that a boiled sugar can be subject to deformation, or may even lose its shape entirely, if its storage temperature is high and its glass transition temperature is fairly low. The product which is initially dry to the touch becomes sticky. It should be noted that the more water there is in the sugar, the more it is subject to a risk of changes of this kind during storage.
To summarise, in order to avoid boiled sugars becoming sticky during storage, it appears that there is still a requirement that the water content be neither too low nor too high.
In the second place, boiled sugars may have a tendency to crystallise in an uncontrolled manner during storage and, because of this, to lose their very attractive glassy appearance, since they then resemble more malt-sugars which, as is well known, are very different from the confectionery products which are dealt with in the context of the present invention. This crystallisation may take place only on the surface of the sweet or else also in the core of the sweet.
Surface crystallisation inevitably requires the absorption of a significant amount of water and corresponds to a stage of change which is complementary to the one described above. It also requires a large enough concentration of crystallisable molecules, generally molecules of sucrose, in the liquefied peripheral layer. When these two conditions are combined, crystallisation then takes place starting at the surface of the sweet and working its way towards the centre. This phenomenon, if it is uncontrolled, is known under the name ‘turning’. It makes the sweets totally opaque and white.
Crystallisation may also take place right in the core of the boiled sugar if this contains large quantities of water or if the storage temperature is too high. Under these conditions, the boiled sugar then exhibits extreme softness and can no longer be considered to be a true solid. Rather it is a liquid supersaturated with crystallisable molecules whose change into a crystalline state is inevitable and quasi-spontaneous. Specialists call this type of crystallisation ‘graining’.
In fact, if boiled sugars are not to be unstable, and become sticky or turned or grained over the course of time, it is still necessary, on the one hand, to regulate their water content and, on the other hand, to regulate the concentration of crystallisable molecules, that is usually the concentration of sucrose.
Immediately after manufacture, the boiled sugars obtained are either individually wrapped before being placed in bags or are placed directly into bags or cardboard boxes without any individual wrappers. In the latter case, the boiled sugars are called plain, that is without individual wrappers.
Currently, there are four solutions for making boiled sugars which are sufficiently resistant to humidity and heat to be marketed in the plain form.
The first consists in making sweets based on a syrup of hydrogenated starch hydrolysates and isomalt. In order to be marketed without individual wrappers, the boiled sugars have to contain more than 80 wt. %, on a dry basis, of isomalt. These sweets have been described in particular in the Leatherhead Food R.A. report no. 652, page 11, June 1989 (authors: G. A. Hammond and J. B. Hudson). Although the combination of these two products enables the absorption of water by the sweets obtained to be limited, especially as a result of the weakly hygroscopic nature of isomalt, it has resulted in a large increase in the cost price of the sweets and a perceptible loss of sweetening power. In fact, isomalt is a very costly product and therefore not really suitable for
Duflot Pierrick
Fouache Catherine
Ribadeau-Dumas Guillaume
Corbin Arthur L.
Freres Roquette
Sturm & Fix LLP
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