posted on 2024-11-23, 03:59authored byInderpreet Kaur
Recombined dairy products are commonly produced using various dry milk ingredients, fat, sugar and water. This research work examined the possibility of replacing milk protein, specifically casein/caseinates, with Isolated Wheat Protein (IWP) in various recombined dairy products. These include Recombined Sweetened Condensed Milk (RSCM), Recombined Full Cream Milk Powder (RFCMP), Recombined High Fat Powder (RHFP) and Coffee Creamer (CC). These dairy products were first manufactured at laboratory-scale with certain modifications in the standard manufacturing process. This was done to achieve finished product with the desirable properties of commercial product. Next, the partial or full replacement of casein/caseinate using IWP in the selected dairy-type products was investigated. And last, the emulsifying properties of both casein and IWP were compared in terms of a range of functional parameters critical to particular dairy products. IWP performed better than casein in RSCM in terms of emulsifying properties since only partial replacement (25% and 50% with 1% reduced overall protein) was sufficient to compete with 100% casein in terms of viscosity, the most critical parameter for resulting product 'Imitation Sweetened Creamer (ISC)'. The free fat content and emulsion stability, the most critical parameters for spray dried emulsions, particularly, RFCMP, RHFP and CC, performed functionally the same as Recombined Creamer Powder (RCP) made using IWP. Consequently IWP can be used to totally replace casein in a RFCMP, RHFP and CC-type emulsion products. Similar products made using dairy and non-dairy fats showed that casein and IWP can effectively stabilise emulsions whatever the type of fat/oil used. This study showed that Isolated Wheat Protein performed better than casein/caseinates in the selected liquid emulsion system (RSCM), but was only comparable in the spray-dried emulsions (RFCMP, RHP and CC).