COLOUR GRADING: SPICES

Spices are valued for their flavours and properties. Spices enhance a Foods’ flavour, aroma and colour therefore adding to the products appeal and taste, but more and more customers are looking for reliability in their purchases. Spices, which don’t behave like synthetic colours, require a lot of blending and mixing to keep the taste, appearance and properties on track. One of these properties that needs to be controlled is colour.

All spices are created from ground raw materials. As raw materials come in different colours and change from season to season it is important to understand the colour of a spice. There is a need to determine the relationship between the colour of a Chilli or Pepper and it’s flavour intensity. Are dark red chillies hotter than lighter red chillies? More and more research indicates that there is a link between colour and flavour.

By measuring the colour of chillies and peppers one can develop a Colour Chilli scale which indicates flavour and intensity of that chilli. This can be done for all natural ingredients like ginger, tumeric and even black pepper.

Colour measurement can assist those in the spice industry in the following ways:

• Measure the colour of raw materials and ingredients
• Measure the colour of Chillies, Peppers or Roots at the source
• Sort Chillies or Peppers in batches according to their colour
• Develop a Colour to Flavour scale which can be used to grade ingredients
• Control and manage the colour of final spice products
• Control and manage the drying, grinding and blending process
• Ingredients and raw materials can also be quickly authenticated by making use of the phenomena of Metamerism.