Enrober
An enrober is a machine used in the confectionery industry to coat a food item with a coating medium, typically chocolate. Foods coated by enrobers include nuts, ice cream, toffee and other miscellaneous candy items, biscuits and cookies. Enrobing is essentially a mechanized form of hand-dipping. Enrobing with chocolate extends the shelf life of a confection.[1]
History
Coating a confection in chocolate was traditionally a slow manual process involving dipping the pieces into melted chocolate by hand. As demand for chocolate coated sweets grew, it became impractical or impossible to employ enough people to dip sweets into melted chocolate to keep up with required production capacity.[2] To fulfill this need for high-capacity chocolate coating, the enrober machine was invented in France in 1903,[3] brought to the United States, and perfected to perform the work of at least twenty people.[2]
Process
The process of enrobing involves placing the items on the enrober's feed band, which may consist of a wire mesh or containers in which the confection to be enrobed are placed, with each container having drain holes to recover excess chocolate. The enrober maintains the coating medium at a controlled constant temperature and pumps the medium into a flow pan. The medium flows from the flow pan in a continuous curtain and bottoming bed that the food items pass through, completely coating them. After being coated, a wire mesh conveyor belt transports the confection to a cooling stage.[4]
References
- ^ Yiu H. Hui (2007). Handbook of Food Products Manufacturing. Wiley-Interscience. p. 686.
{{cite book}}: Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help) - ^ a b Louisiana Sugar Planters' Association, Louisiana Sugar Chemists' Association, American Cane Growers' Association (1913). The Louisiana planter and sugar manufacturer, Volume 51. Louisiana Planter and Sugar Manufacturer Co. p. 69.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Arthur William Knapp (1920). Cocoa and chocolate: their history from plantation to consumer. Chapman and Hall, ltd. p. 152.
- ^ MD Ranken (1997). Food Industries Manual. Springer. p. 439.
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