But from a chemistry standpoint, that is A LOT! Why do we care? Because each fatty acid has a different melting point and each combination (each TAG) has a different melting point and the proportion of those TAGs causes each cocoa butter to have a different melting point.Īnd THAT is why tempering is aggravating to so many people. Mostly there is POP, POS and SOS with smaller amounts of PLP, POO, PLS, and SOO. In reality it is actually much less – thank goodness. Just from crunching some numbers (6 3 : 6 for the 6 fatty acids, 3 for the ‘tri’) there are 216 possible ‘common’ (meaning I excluded the ‘other’) TAGs in cocoa butter.
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There are 6 named “common” fatty acids plus the catch all ‘other’. Just the first letter of each fatty acid. For ease of reference and reading, it is often referred (in context) as PSO. To state it again, cocoa butter is a mixture of different TAGs. But cocoa butter has other triglycerides (BTW, in the literature they are also called TriAcylGlycerides or TAG). It is made up of Palmitic, Stearic and Oleic acid. The picture above shows one possible triglyceride in cocoa butter. Now, cocoa butter is not one fixed triglyceride. We are just going to use the common names. Guess where they found it first? Yep, from the pressing of the palm kernel. It has 16 carbon atom in it (each of those jogs back and forth represent a carbon atom). I high and fancy standardized name, and their common name, often based on the source it was first discovered in.įrom the picture above, the top fatty acid is hexadecanoic acid. Next, each of those fatty acids (the lines) have a different name depending on how long they are. A room temperature ‘butter’ from the cocoa plant. It’s generally called a fat if it is derived from an animal and a butter if from a plant source. The layman’s term for this is fat or butter (if it is solid at room temperature) or oil (if it is a liquid). And since there are three fatty acids attached, it is a….Tri-glyceride. Just think of it as different tenses of a word. When things (those ‘lines’ or fatty acids) are attached to the backbone it’s simply called a glyceride. Those three “O” attached by other lines? That is a glycerin structure.
The first thing is that this is called a triglyceride. Have a look at the following chemical structure. So, some working definitions and explanations. But really, they are just words, and to my mind (yeah, I’m biased) pretty logical. I also know that a large proportion of people go glassy-eyed at the thought of chemistry. In my previous life I was a chemist, so this stuff is as intuitive to me as the alphabet is to you. Wall of text (and a couple pictures) ahead – plus SCIENCE!īefore we really get into it we rather need to talk the same language. But it is ALSO backed up by LOTS of cross referencing.Īnd fair warning. I am pulling a bit of my data from Wikipedia.
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Chemical structures, what that means, how to think about them….and why all that great information only takes you so far before you have to start bringing the Art into it.įull disclosure. We are going to geek out on cocoa butter. If you notice the tag line for Chocolate Alchemy, it is about both the Art and Science of chocolate making. Are these three fatty acids the main matter of chocolate crystal? Some article point out palmitatic acid, stearatic acid, and oleatic acid many times. I am wondering what kind of glycerides of fatty acids affect crystallization, so I search more information, but I am not sure the answer.