Gum blend serves up creamy salad dressings
According to the company, most manufacturers of creamy salad dressings would use modified starch as a stabilizer. TIC Gums’ Saladizer Dairy Stabilizer can be used in all kinds of creamy dressings, but it is particularly beneficial for the texture of bleu cheese dressings, it said.
Lead food scientist Maureen Akins, who worked on the development and testing of the product, told FoodNavigator-USA.com that the problem with these is that “enzymes found in blue cheese tend to break down starch.” By using gums instead, manufacturers avoid this problem.
"The Saladizer Dairy Stabilizer is an example of how we are responding to customers' needs for solutions to very specific challenges," she said. “By solving that problem, this new gum blend allows manufacturers to create better dressings in a faster, more reliable way, and that, in turn, saves them from both production and consumer acceptability issues."
Akins added that although modified starch can also produce a very full mouthfeel for all kinds of creamy dressings, the texture can sometimes be “pasty.”
“The usage level is going to be much less,” she said. “And there’s going to be a creamy mouthfeel and better suspension of particulates.”
The ingredient comes in powder form that is added at the beginning of the manufacturing process along with water or milk.
Similar cost
Despite a lower usage level – typically a manufacturer would use about five times less gum than starch – food companies are unlikely to make cost savings by switching to its gum-based stabilizer, Akins said. The gum may be more expensive per pound but “the overall cost will be about the same.”
“It may not actually be a cost saving in itself, but any savings would be in storage and transportation,” she said.
The company would not reveal the exact composition of its Saladizer Dairy Stabilizer, nor how the gum blend would appear on an ingredient list. But Akins said that this information would be provided to manufacturers that request an ingredient sample.
