The present invention relates to edible oil compositions which are not primarily of animal origin, having natural meaty flavoring components, and more particularly relates to methods for manufacturing meat flavored fatty ester vegetable oil products which are particularly useful for deep-fat frying, as well as to naturally meat flavored vegetable oil products produced by such methods.
Edible fats and oil products such as beef tallow and vegetable oils, which may be partially hydrogenated, are conventionally used for deep-fat frying of foods in home, institutional, industrial and commercial food preparation, for coating or spraying of precooked food products such as precooked bakery goods, crackers, potato products and other food products in which the organoleptic properties of a suitable shortening are desired.
Deep-fat frying involves the partial or complete submersion of a food product in a bath of edible fat or oil at elevated temperatures to produce rapid cooking.
In deep-fat frying, beef tallow shortening and shortening blends containing beef tallow provide particularly desirable meaty flavor, aroma and other organoleptic properties to food products cooked with such tallow containing products. In deep-fat frying, some of the fat is retained in the fried food product. Because large quantities of food products are passed through the heated fat, the fat must be continuously or periodically replenished to restore to the cooking bath, the fat carried out with the cooked food product. Large quantities of tallow containing fats and oils are consumed in the commercial deep-frying of products such as donuts, french fried potatoes, potato chips, chicken, nuts and fish. Tallow containing products are also used as a spray or coating on prebaked products such as crackers and potato products. However, beef tallow contains cholesterol, which is incorporated into the fried food product together with the glyceride components of the tallow. Beef tallow also contains a relatively high proportion of saturated fatty acids, which are also incorporated into food products fried therein.
In order to reduce the amount of cholesterol and saturated fatty acids incorporated in fried, baked and prebaked food products, vegetable oil shortenings may be used in the preparation of shortening compositions which have relatively low saturated fatty acid content, and moreover, do not contain cholesterol. However, such vegetable oil shortenings typically do not provide the desirable natural meaty flavor of beef tallow.
Substantial effort has been made to develop vegetable oil products which have desirable meaty flavor characteristics in deep-frying use. For example, U.S. Pat. 4,169,901 describes efforts to provide volatile, artificial meaty flavorants for deep-fat frying shortenings. However, such products contain artificial ingredients, and edible vegetable oil shortenings having natural meaty flavoring agents, and methods for preparing such shortenings, would be desirable. Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide such methods. It is a further object to provide edible vegetable shortenings which have a natural meaty flavor and which are able to impart such flavor to foods which are fried in such shortenings, or which are sprayed or coated on such products. These and other objects of the invention will become more apparent from the following detailed description and the accompanying drawings.