The effects of oil content on the structural and textural proper-ties of cottonseed butter/spread products

Authors: He, Zhongqi; Rogers, Stephen; Nam, Sunghyun; Klasson, K Thomas

Submitted to: Foods
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 11/13/2023
Publication Date: 11/17/2023
Citation: He, Z., Rogers, S.I., Nam, S., Klasson, K.T. 2023. The effects of oil content on the structural and textural properties of cottonseed butter/spread products. Foods. 12(22). Article 4158. https://doi.org/10.3390/foods12224158.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/foods12224158

Interpretive Summary: Glandless cottonseed kernels with additional cottonseed oil could be used to make plant butter-like food spread products. As an essential ingredient in the cottonseed butter products, the oil component not only provided nutrients and energy of the products, but also played important roles in the textural properties and butter stability. While oil content did not alter much the appearance (color) of the butter products, high oil content generally improved the textural properties, but lowered the butter stability. Tested the total oil con-tent from 36 to 57%, our data suggested the butter products with 47-50% showed charac-teristics of firm and smooth butter products with reasonable storage stability. Those products with oil contents ranged between 53 and 57% might serve as creamy spread products with shorter shelf-life times.

Technical Abstract: Plant-based butters from nuts and seeds have steadily increased in consumer popularity due to their unique flavors and healthy nutritional properties. Oil content is a critical parameter to measure the proper consistency and stability of plant butter and spread products. Pervious work has shown that glandless cottonseed can be used to formulate cottonseed butter products to in-crease the values of cottonseed. As part of the effort on valorization of cottonseed, this work evaluated the effects of the oil content on the microstructural and textural properties of cottonseed butter/spread products. While the oil content in the raw cottonseed kernels is 35% of the kernel biomass, additional cottonseed oil was added to make the cottonseed butter products with six oil content levels (i. e., 36, 43, 47, 50, 53 and 57%). The values of three textural parameters, firmness, spreadability, and adhesiveness, decreased rapidly in an exponential mode with the increasing oil content. The particle size population in these butter samples was characterized the similar trimodal distribution with the majority in the middle mode region of particle size around 4.5-10 microm-eters. Higher oil content decreased the butter particle size slightly, but increased oil separation during storage. The oxidation stability with a rapid oxygen measurement was gradually reduced from 250 min with 36% oil to 65 min with 57% oil. The results of this work provided information for further optimization of formulating parameters of cottonseed butter products.