In: Biology
Does freezing influence the stability of mayonnaise? Why?
Mayonnaise is an emulsion of semi-solid oil in water and it is composed of vegetable oil,vinegar, egg yolk,salt and sugar. Here vegetable oil works as the oil phase,egg yolk as emulsifier and sugar as the water phase. About 70-805% of fat is contained in the mayonnaise. It is used in variety food to inprove their taste,palatability and desirabilty. A food like mayonnaise which has more fat will be destabilized when it is subjected to freezing. It is the process of lowering the temperature to store food. Since mayonnaise is an emulsion it is not good to freeze it because the ingrediants will be seperayet. What happens is,if mayonnaise is freezed the destabilization or phase seperation of oil in water will occur. This is because of the crystallization of the fat and water in respective phasesthrough coalescence or partial coalescence. Ice crystals can also destabilize the the emulsions by flocculating oil droplets,increasing ionic strenght and also by changing the pH in the unfrozen aqueous phase. So it is not advicable to freeze mayonnize. But there are some methods used to freeze mayonnize in a air-tight glass bottle but it should be kept ony for 5 to 6 days.