How Chocolate Always Tastes Like Chocolate

摘要

Rheometers, texture analyzers and viscometers are essential in a food and beverage QC lab to ensure the consistency of a product, batch after batch. Rheology is the science that characterizes how materials flow. Assessing rheology of fillings for confectionery products, like cakes and pastries, is accomplished by using rotating spindles on instruments known as rheometers, or with compression probes on test equipment known as texture analyzers. A rheometer quantifies flow behavior by measuring the resistance torque when rotating the spindle in a filling mixture, and the texture analyzer by pushing a cylinder or cone-shaped probe into a chamber full of the same material. Both approaches provide information on flow behavior, which equates with the "spreadability" of a filling. A rheometer can provide additional information on a filling's ability to hold position after application to a cake or after being squirted into a pastry.