Confectionery fats from palm oil

The influence of diglycerides (DG's) and trisaturated glycerides (P‐P‐P) on tempering and the hardness of confectionery products are described. Palm oil and its processed products in confectionery fats have been reported (1,2). Palm oil contains a symmetric triglyceride (P‐O‐P) as a main component which has polymorphic changes similar to those of cocoa butter, so a mixture of these is able to use a tempering process similar to that used for cocoa butter. Details for fat crystals and polymorphism have been reported (3,4). Okada (5) used a mixture of tristearin and tripalmitin and studied the behavior of polymorphism using X‐ray diffraction. The effects of DG's on polymorphic change in palm oil also have been reported (6,7), and Okiy (8) suggested that DG's have an inferior effect on the quality of palm oil when used in the solidified phase. However, there have not been many papers regarding how the above influence works in the production process or how it affects confectionery products. Palm oil contains about 10% trisaturated glycerides together with a few percent of mono‐ and diglycerides as minor components, which have been produced during the maturation of palm fruits and processing of fats. It is very difficult to eliminate these completely during the refining process. This paper reports a study of the influence of these minor components on tempering and hardness of products by using a simulated tempering machine. We have found that DG's lower the temperature of tempering and soften the hardness of products and that P‐P‐P increased the viscosity of products during tempering process but increased the hardness of products very little.