Impact of roasting, boiling and reheating times on the chemical quality of cocoa butter lipids

Cocoa butter is among the earliest products to be obtained through traditional methods during the processing of cocoa by smallholder farmers in Cameroon's cocoa-growing regions. The lack of control over the conditions of the extraction processes for this material results in the production of cocoa butter of poor chemical quality. The objective of this study was to standardise the traditional cocoa butter extraction process with a view to supplying various markets with a product of good lipids quality. To do this, fermented cocoa beans produced under optimal conditions were roasted (6–12 min), after that the paste was boiled (5–15 min) and reheated (3–7 min). A centred composite design was applied to these factors, generating twenty trials, six of which were in the centre. The impact of these extraction conditions on the lipid quality of the cocoa butter was determined by assessing lipid quality indices (acid, iodine, thiobarbituric acid and peroxide). These analyses show that the extraction conditions had a significant effect ( p ≤ 0.05) on the chemical quality of the cocoa butters lipids. Furthermore, all the butters produced had peroxide, acid and thiobarbituric acid values that complied with the standard. Free fatty acids decreased significantly ( p ≤ 0.05) with increasing bean roasting times and paste boiling times, in contrast to the iodine and peroxide values. The optimal conditions were observed when the beans were subjected to a roasting procedure for duration of 12.81 min, followed by a boiling phase of 16.18 min and a subsequent reheating step for 5.63 min. The application of these optimal conditions allowed us to obtained 0.54 ± 0.01% oleic acid as an acid value, 2.48 ± 0.20 meq MDA/kg as a thiobarbituric acid value, 35.53 ± 0.00 g I 2 /100 g as an iodine value of and 1.41 ± 0.25 meq O 2 /kg as a peroxide value. These conditions yielded a cocoa butter of satisfactory lipid quality indices, adhering to the stipulated parameters of the Codex standard. In view of these, it is recommended that cocoa butter producers apply these optimal conditions in order to produce a product of enhanced market quality that complies with the established standards.