Based on the Beer-Lambert Law, the absorbance of light of a sample is directly proportional to the concentration of the molecule which absorbs light. Distilled water is used as a blank solution to set the spectrometer to a zero reading due to none of the absorbing species present in the solution tested. In this experiment, heat is used to speed up the browning of reducing sugar to produce furan. It is due to the chemical reaction of the reducing sugar with the free amino group of an amino acid. The amino group that is present in monosaccharides sugar are a short chain, therefore it is more reactive. Reducing sugar system produces more furan compare to non-reducing sugar system. The higher the concentration of furan in the system, the darker …show more content…
The difference in pH in fructose-glycine of pH5 is negligible but there is a difference in pH in fructose-glycine of pH8. This happens because the fructose sugar degrades more rapidly than the amino acids. At the same time, glycine was moderately lost below pH8. The final value of pH is dependent on the formation and degradation of sugar and amino acid.
As the absorbance increase, the pH also increases despite the absence of browning reaction. In the experiment, a buffer is used to keep the pH at constant around pH5 and pH8. This is because the buffering capacity at the range of pH5 to pH8 favours browning. In fact, the browning intensity increases from sucrose to lactose, fructose, and glucose.
Milk contains lysine which is an amino acid and lactose. According to the experiment browning in non-fat dry milk, the milk powder will turn browner the longer it is left in the oven. When the non-fat dry milk samples leave for 10 minutes, it turns pale yellow, for 20 minutes, it is a bright yellow color, while it is 30 minutes, it is yellowish with a slightly brown and at 60 minutes, it turns into brown color. The prolonged stay in the oven causes the production of melanoidin to increase, thus explaining the increase in