Processing of Food Commodities

FSSAI standards for matured alcoholic beverages:

• Under Food Safety and Standards (Alcoholic Beverages) Regulations, 2018, any alcoholic beverage claiming to be 'matured' shall be aged for a period of not less than one year in oak or other suitable wooden vats or barrels.
• Two years is required for specific aged spirits in other international jurisdictions (e.g., US straight whiskey), but Indian FSSAI baseline standard specifies one year.
• Three years applies to Scotch whisky regulations in the UK.
• Six months is insufficient for statutory matured declaration in India.

Unit operations in ice cream manufacturing:

• Homogenization breaks down fat globules under high pressure ($15\text{--}20\text{ MPa}$) to create a uniform emulsion.
• Aging involves holding the pasteurized mix at $0\text{--}4^\circ\text{C}$ for 4 to 24 hours to allow fat crystallization and protein hydration.
• Overrun is defined as the percentage increase in volume of finished ice cream over the initial volume of liquid mix, achieved by whipping and incorporating fine air cells during dynamic scraped-surface freezing: $\%\text{ Overrun} = \frac{\text{Volume of ice cream} - \text{Volume of mix}}{\text{Volume of mix}} \times 100$.
• Hardening is the subsequent blast freezing of packaged soft ice cream at $-30$ to $-40^\circ\text{C}$ to solidify remaining water.

Origin of the phosphatase test in dairy science:

• In 1935, H. D. Kay and W. R. Graham developed the colorimetric alkaline phosphatase test (using disodium phenyl phosphate substrate) to assess the thermal pasteurization adequacy of bovine milk.
• Louis Pasteur developed the general concept of thermal stabilization (pasteurization) in wine and beer.
• Franz Schardinger developed the methylene blue reduction test (Schardinger test for xanthine oxidase).
• Stephen Babcock developed the Babcock test (1890) for fat determination in milk.