Review of cocoa butter and alternative fats for use in chocolate - Part A. Compositional data

This work reviews the literature on the compositional data of vegetable fats used or proposed as alternatives to cocoa butter in chocolate and confectionery products. Cocoa butter is the only continuous phase in chocolate, thus responsible for the dispersion of all other constituents and for the physical behaviour of chocolate. Unique to cocoa butter is its brittleness at room temperature and its quick and complete melting at body temperature. There were, and are, strong efforts to replace cocoa butter in part for chocolate production for technological and economic reasons. Such cocoa butter alternatives are the so-called cocoa butter equivalents (CBEs), cocoa butter substitutes (CBSs) and cocoa butter replacers (CBRs). These are mostly mixtures of various vegetable fats (often modified) and can consist of palm and palm kernel oil, illipe fat, shea butter, sal fat and kokum butter. In addition, a large variety of other vegetable oils can be used. Their composition according to triglycerides, fatty acids, sterols and other unsaponifiable components is discussed in this report. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.