Butter analytical methods

Gallay, W., Environmental Pollutants — Selected Analytical Methods, Butter-worths, London (1975). 

For many years, the economic value of milk was based mainly or totally on its fat content, which is still true in some cases. This practice was satisfactory when milk was used mainly or solely for butter production. Possibly, the origin of paying for milk on the basis of its fat content, apart from its value for butter production, lies in the fact that relatively simple quantitative analytical methods were developed for fat earlier than for protein or lactose. Because of its economic value, there has long been commercial pressure to increase the yield of milk fat per cow by nutritional or genetic means. 

Various Extraneous Matters.—From 10 to 20 grams of the butter are boiled with water, the aqueous liquid being filtered and tested by the usual analytical methods for alum, borax, sodium silicate, sugar and glucose. 

Many consumers also wish to be made aware of any genetic modification to the crop. Genetic modification might be beneficial for cocoa butter production as the characteristics of the butter could be modified in the growing bean, and also resistance to pests and diseases might be introduced to the plant. Analytical methods are required to detect such modification, in both the raw materials and the processed product. 

Multivariate statistical techniques can be used to combine data from several classical analytical methods. In this way Simoneau et al. (2000) tested the quantification of CBEs in mixtures with cocoa butter by analysis of fatty acids by GC and triacyglycerols with both GC and HPLC. 

The new European Chocolate Directive [14] allows the addition of up to 5% of vegetable fats other than cocoa butter (CB), the so-called cocoa butter equivalents (CBEs), in chocolate. CBEs resemble the chemical composition and physical properties of CB very closely, making them therefore extremely difficult to quantify and even in some cases to detect (especially at very low levels). There is a perceived need within official control laboratories for reliable analytical methods for the quantification (around the 5% level) of CBEs in chocolate, as Member States laws and administrative provisions need to comply with the new Chocolate Directive before August 2003. All proposed analytical methods have been evaluated by the JRC in collaboration with EU expert laboratories [15]. The performance of several methods has been compared and a final method based on the analysis of the main components, triglycerides, has been proposed for further validation. 

Lipp M, Simoneau C, Ulberth F, Anklam E (1999) Possibilities and limits to detect cocoa butter equivalents in mixture with cocoa butter— devising analytical methods for the determination of cocoa butter and other vegetable fats in chocolate with the aim of checking compliance with existing Community labelling. EU Report EUR 18992 EN... 

Karoui De Baerdemaeker (2006) wrote a review about the analytical methods coupled with chemometric tools for the determination of the quality and identity of dairy products. Spectroscopic techniques (NIR, MIR, FFFS front face fluorescence spectroscopy, etc.), coupled with chemometric tools have many potential advantages for the evaluation of the identity dairy products (milk, ice cream, yogurt, butter, cheese, etc). 

Chapman and co-workers (Mahon and Chapman, 1954 Anglin et al., 1955) have developed an analytic method for the detection of adulteration of butter with animal and vegetable oils. They commented that ordinary... 

All of the classical analytical techniques applied to oils analysis have been applied to studying the authenticity of cocoa butter and considerable attention has been paid to the issue of detecting and quantifying non-cocoa fats in mixtures with cocoa butter and as incorporated into chocolate. A substantial review of these methods has been published (Lipp and Anklam, 1998b). 

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