A very interesting application for Differential Scanning Calorimeter is the analysis of foods. Food chemistry is a very important subject to guarantee quality and pureness. There is no industrial food product that is not undergoing quality and purity control by many methods such as calorimetry.
In this application example, different chocolate types were compared by DSC. Such studies can help to investigate the melting behavior, melting temperature and fat content of different mixtures and therefore they are crucial for the design of a tasty, creamy product.
The figure shows DSC profiles of five different chocolate samples. Each sample was precooled with liquid nitrogen quench cooler to -40°C and then measured by Chip DSC 10 using the same conditions and similar sample mass.
The result shows that nearly all tested chocolates show a double peak that is caused by low melting milk fats and higher melting vegetable plant fats. The quality of emulsifiers and melting temperature can be compared and used for QC and product design.
In this example, the handmade chocolate (red curve) shows a much more homogeneous melting behavior than cheaper industrial milk chocolate (brown curves). Especially the black and white cream chocolates (orange and black curve) show two very separate melting peaks that indicates very inhomogeneous melting behavior which could also be used actively to create a special taste.
