月餠の皮に関する研究―主として糖水について―

抄録

“Geppei” is a traditional Chinese food. A way of preparing “Geppei” is as follows: First of all, the mixture of sugar, water and vinegar is boiled until the sugar content becomes 67%. This sugar solution is used after aging for several weeks. Then, the sugar solution, lard, wheat flour, and “kan-sui”, which is a Chinese special alkaline solution, are kneaded to a dough. Bean paste wrapped in the dough is baked into “Geppei”. A characteristic of the crust of “Geppei” is that it retains its soft texture during several weeks storage. In this study, the effects of the vinegar in the sugar solution on the physical properties of the crust were studied.
The crust made of the sugar solution with the vinegar was softer than the crust without vinegar. Invert sugar was produced markedly in the sugar solution with the vinegar during boiling or aging. The crusts were made using the sugar solution which contains sucrose, glucose and fructose in various ratio, and the breaking strength was measured by a Rheoner. The more the glucose and fructose was included, the smaller the breaking strength and the softer the crust was. This is thought to be due to high hygroscopic property of invert sugar. In addition, the effect of “kan-sui” was to make the crust a desirable brown color.