Preparation of tobacco extract

Abstract

A method for preparation of smoke extract from wood tar for flavouring and colouring of food products is disclosed. The smoke extract is with the present method produced by means of supercritical extraction of fractions of the wood tar. The extractions solvent, such as carbon dioxide, has very good properties of entraining and resolving the required fractions of the wood tar, and it is relatively simple to separate the resolved components in the retrieving process, as the different components have different solubility at different supercritical and subcritical conditions. Thus, a smoke extract containing less than 10 ppb (parts per billion) of benzo (a) pyrene and less than 20 ppb of benzo (a) athracene may be obtained. In one embodiment, the wood tar is subject to a separation process prior to the supercritical extraction to remove a substantial part of the unwanted components.

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention relates to the preparation of smoke extracts for food flavoring and coloring. Background technique [0002] Smoking food for preservation and flavoring of food is a very old and well known practice in which food is subjected to smoke from the burning of wood, in which process, due to lack of sufficient oxygen or due to the temperature during the burning process, the The gas released is incomplete combustion. Thus, the smoke contains a large number of substances that provide the desired character to the food product. [0003] For many foods it is preferable to obtain a smoke flavor without subjecting the product to the traditional smoking process, and various types of smoke extracts have been developed for this purpose. [0004] A method of preparing a liquid smoke extract is disclosed in US 3,106,473 in which water is passed countercurrently to the wood smoke to extract the water soluble fraction of the smoke for use as an aqueo...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

However, the method requires treatment or regeneration of the resin and is therefore a complex process that also requires careful control and monitoring of the quality of the liquid smoke produced, as wood and the content of the wood tar produced are known to be highly variable naturally