Impact of added food ingredients on foaming and texture of the whipped toppings: a chemometric analysis

Whipping toppings are popular among pastry chefs, they are used as a fat-base for cake fillings, cake decoration, topping fruits, desserts, cupcakes and layer cakes. The range of pastry products and the organoleptic properties that can be achieved using whipped topping are wide, which is determined by adding different ingredients. Owing to the chemical variability, colloid nature and raw material processing it is difficult to forecast whipped topping-based product quality factors. We report on the influence of added sugar-, protein- and oil-containing raw materials, solid particles and conditions (pH, temperature) on foaming and the texture of the whipped topping, where the foam structure is stabilized by partial coalescence. Foam systems were characterized in terms of overrun, stability, and firmness. The development of foam volume and firmness in the cocoa butter-based whipped topping systems was found to be strongly dependent on pH, temperature and the concentration of added food ingredients. Overall, these findings suggest that the properties of the whipped toppings are dependent on the ingredient colloid condition thus entailing whipped topping overrun. The addition of hydrophobic or hydrophilic ingredients, diluting the WT, lead to lower overrun. The whipped topping firmness depends both on the ingredient colloid condition and on the ingredient viscosity. Hydrophobic powders increase the whipped topping firmness, whereas hydrophilic ones decrease it. For viscous liquids and soft food materials, hydrophilic and hydrophobic behavior is less significant than the viscosity value for whipped topping firmness. Low-viscosity hydrophobic liquids can fully destroy the whipped topping structure. The chemometric grouping techniques, namely, principle component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) were used to classify all the analyzed samples by the raw material impact on the whipped topping overrun and firmness. This approach enabled to identify six clusters, uniting the items that have similar influence on the whipped toppings foaming and texture. Moreover, four groups were singled out by the correlation between the added ingredient concentration and whipped topping firmness. The results are in line with the earlier findings based on the consideration of the whipped topping microstructure. The results of this research enable to select and prepare powder, o/w emulsion or liquid raw materials to improve product quality.