Enzymatic maceration of Tabasco pepper: Effect on the yield, chemical and sensory aspects of the sauce
Introduction
Global spice trade has been continuously increasing, and since 2010 the increase has been in line with and sometimes overcome that of agricultural products (Jambor, Toth, & Koroshegyi, 2018). Vietnam, India, Indonesia, Brazil and China are the biggest spice producers in the world, accounting for more than 80% of the global production, which amounts to over 450,000 tons per year. As to global spice consumption, the producing countries represent 40%, whereas North America and Europe together represent another 40% (Gulick, 2017). However, current spice import patterns suggest diversification, and the world market for sauces and condiments is steadily increasing (Kim et al., 2018).
Tabasco red pepper sauce is the oldest amongst hot-sauce brands and has become a food phenomenon. It is now widely consumed around the world to enhance the flavour of food. Every day, people consume 450,000 bottles of Tabasco sauce, adding up to over 160 million bottles a year (Klara, 2015). The Tabasco pepper is a variety of Capsicum frutescens, with Central America as its primary centre of origin (Mongkolporn & Taylor, 2011). Brazil is considered a secondary centre of diversity of this genus (Dias et al., 2013). The American cultivar Tabasco McIlhenny was introduced in Ceará, Brazil, in the early 2000s, and genetic selection made in the original population by Embrapa resulted in new cultivars, which are now being used by the productive sector to supply the Brazilian market and for exportation (Pereira, Crisóstomo, Rossetti, & Santos, 2014).
There is not a standardized method to produce pepper sauces; however, the process generally begins with the lactic acid fermentation of the peppers by autochthonous bacteria (Di Cagno et al., 2009). First, sodium chloride is added to the peppers and they are ground. The salt selects homofermentative lactic acid bacteria, and fermentation eliminates the enterobacteria, thus making the pulp microbiologically safe (Cousin et al., 2017; Maruvada & McFeeters, 2009). After four weeks, the pulp is sieved to obtain the pepper extract, to which vinegar and salt are added to formulate the sauce (Crisóstomo et al., 2008).
Enzymatic maceration is expected to increase the yield of pepper extracts. Considering that the vegetal cell wall is mostly composed of cellulose, hemicellulose and pectin, cellulases, hemicellulases and pectinases, or a proportionate blend thereof, are used for this purpose. These hydrolytic enzymes cleave the polysaccharide chains and disrupt the cell walls, facilitating the sieving process by separating the pulp and peel from the seeds and increasing the extract yield. Eventually, the permeability of the hydrolyzed cell wall increases, providing the release of functional compounds, such as carotenoids, capsaicinoids, polyphenols and flavor compounds (Rodrigues, 2016). Cellulases and pectinases are applied to peppers for the extraction of oleoresins (Baby & Ranganathan, 2016), carotenoids (Nath, Kaur, Rudra, & Varghese, 2016) and volatile oils (Chandran, Amma, Menon, Purushothaman, & Nisha, 2012).
In the present study, enzymatic pre-treatment of Tabasco chilli pepper was studied as an alternate method for enhancing the yield of pepper extract used in the Tabasco sauce elaboration. In addition, the sauce was submitted to sensory evaluation, comparing it with the pepper sauce elaborated by the conventional method.
Section snippets
Material and methods
The sequence of experiments is presented in the flow chart of Fig. 1. Initially, a chemical characterization of the Tabasco pepper pulp was performed. Next, two commercial enzymatic complexes were tested, alone and combined, and conditions of time and temperature were determined, aiming at reducing consistency. Afterwards, the selected enzymes was used to macerate the pulp, which was then submitted to autochthonous lactic acid fermentation to obtain the pepper extract used in pepper sauce
Pepper pulp characterization
The chemical composition of the pepper pulp is presented in Table 1. The Brazilian Tabasco pepper showed high moisture content (87.02 g/100 g) and relatively high ethereal extract content for a fresh pepper (6.12 g/100 g), but protein and ash contents were around 1 g/100 g, both values compatible with the literature (Bosland & Votava, 2012, p. 229). Carotenoid content was slightly lower than expected (313.66 μg/g), when compared to mature varieties of Capsicum red peppers reported by
Conclusions
This work was the first to propose an innovative technology for preparing Tabasco sauce using an enzymatic pre-treatment to reduce consistency of the pepper pulp and increase the yield of the extract used in the sauce formulation. We demonstrated that the association of Pectinex AR and Celluclast (1 mg/kg each) at 50 °C by 18 h was able to increase the extract yield in 17.5% without impairing the sensory acceptability of the formulated sauce. This result is very relevant to the pepper sauce
Funding sources
This research was supported by Embrapa (Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, Brazil). The author Virna Farias would like to thank CAPES (Coordination of Superior Level Staff Improvement, Brazil) for her scholarship.
Declaration of interest
None.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Virna Luiza de Farias: Investigation, Data curation, Writing - original draft. Ídila Maria da Silva Araújo: Resources, Methodology, Investigation. Renier Felinto Julião da Rocha: Investigation, Writing - original draft. Deborah dos Santos Garruti: Conceptualization, Supervision, Formal analysis, Writing - review & editing. Gustavo Adolfo Saavedra Pinto: Conceptualization, Supervision, Funding acquisition.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors confirm that they have no conflicts of interest with respect to the work described in this manuscript.
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