At this quarter, I have attended 3 seminar.
One was presented by Dr. Deepak Deshpande from Tomas Jefferson University, about bitter taste receptor at Monell Chemical Senses Center, October 27. I thought it would be food science related at the first time, but it turned out to be more about medicine. Dr. Deshpande was talking about bitter taste receptors in lungs, it was about a new treatment to asthma.
The other two was from ACS, both were webinars: Halloween Candy Chemistry: Caramels, Gummies, Jellies, and Candy Corn and Garlic and Other Alliums: The Lore and the Science.
The second outside seminar, Halloween Candy Chemistry: Caramels, Gummies, Jellies, and Candy Corn was presented by Dr. Rich Hartel from University of Wisconsin-Madison. This seminar is about ingredients, chemistry, phase transition and similarity & differences of Halloween candy.
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Hartel talked about texture of caramel. He illustrated that he differences between caramel and other candies is caramel has protein in it, it gives caramel a unique microstructure. He explained that by making comparison among ungrained caramel, grained caramel and fudge. Another point of caramel he mentioned was cold flow, one of the primary concerns of caramel. He explained what cold flow is and why it’s important. He also made a comparison between two candies with same formula except one contains protein while the other not. The one has milk in it deformed much slower than the other one.
After that, he talked about gummy and jelly candies. Gummy is made with gelatin and jelly is made with other stabilizers, such as starch, pectin, agar, gum Arabic. He mentioned about where gelatin is made from, its mechanism, and then he used an experiment to explain its thermoreversibility. After that, he talked about another stabilizer, starch.
At last, Dr. Hartel talked about candy corn. For this part, he talked about its ingredients, recipe and structure of mallow creams, and candy corn