Knowledge
Technical notes.
One mechanism at a time. No product, no price, no sample request, just the thing that goes wrong and why it goes wrong.
13 technical notes
Meat & Poultry
Phosphate does five jobs at once
Most phosphate removal projects fail in the same way.
Bakery
Staling is not spoilage
Most bread is thrown away while it is still perfectly safe to eat.
Pasta & Noodles
The one category where retrogradation is the objective
In almost every product that contains cooked starch, retrogradation is the problem.
Frozen Prepared Meals
Real distribution is never one freeze
Almost every frozen product is validated the same way.
Pasta & Noodles
Cooking loss, and what leaves the noodle
Every noodle plant knows the measurement.
Pastry
A biscuit does not break in the box
Breakage is usually treated as a distribution problem.
Seafood
The brine is decided by the delivery, not by the fish
Put a shrimp brine and a fish brine side by side and they look like they belong to different industries.
Culinary
A flavour is dosed cold and judged hot
A profile is approved in a beaker or a small batch, at ambient temperature, against a target everyone agrees on.
Dairy
Melt and stretch are two different jobs
Every developer working on an analogue pizza cheese has had the same week.
Plant-Based Foods & Alternative Proteins
Methylcellulose sets when it gets hot
Most reformulation projects in this category begin the same way.
Canned & Preserved Foods
Thicken the sauce and you lengthen the cook
A sauce is separating in the can.
Savoury Snacks
A snack can lose crispness quickly
Shelf life trials on snacks produce a result that looks like an error the first time somebody sees it.
Sauces & Dressings
Stabilising an emulsion and thickening it are two different jobs.
Why sauce viscosity and interfacial stability need to be considered separately.
