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View free testsProcessing & Preservation
Carefully heating and cooling a fat, most often chocolate, through specific temperature stages so it sets with a smooth, glossy finish.
Well-tempered chocolate snaps cleanly and looks shiny, which is why chocolatiers control this step carefully before moulding sweets or bars.
Deterioration of fats producing off-flavours. Hydrolytic rancidity releases free fatty acids by lipase or water; oxidative rancidity is a free-radical chain reaction with oxygen at unsaturated bonds.
Addition of hydrogen across double bonds of unsaturated fatty acids using a nickel catalyst, raising melting point and oxidative stability.
