BRAIN

Issued on June 1, 2020

A vegetable cream product extracted from liquid soy milk (Photo 1) debuted! It has a smooth texture and slight sweetness, unlike existing cream products derived from raw milk. This product can be used as an ingredient for cakes, bread, and others.

Taishi Food Inc. (Sannohe-machi, Aomori), and Tohoku University have developed this good-tasting soy-milk cream product. It is a vegetable cream product produced from soy milk that is safe for children and adults who are allergic to dairy products. Moreover, it is expected to be used in a wide range of applications: making healthy soy-milk soup (Photo 2) and using it as an ingredient for dip cream to add smooth texture and baking bread with soy cream mixed in the dough.

Image 2: Dip cream made of soy-milk cream -- With a cookie served with the dipping cream --

(Both Images 1 and 2 were supplied by Taishi Food Inc.)

There are several other products in the soy-milk cream market. However, this rich and thick cream product has been developed for the first time without using thickening polysaccharide, vegetable fat or oil. In that sense, this soy-milk cream product is a novel food ingredient" (according to Taishi Food Inc.).

Generally, the cream is extracted from liquid soy-milk using an industrial centrifuge. Dr. Tomoyuki Fujii, professor at Tohoku University, and the researchers at Taishi Food Inc. established a technique that spins down creamy sediments containing fat and oil from soy milk and separates the sediments stably without losing flavor.

Conventionally, cream derived from soybeans has been primarily manufactured by grinding tofu (soybean curd) in a mixer. With this method, it is challenging to bring out the natural flavor of pure soy milk because of the remaining taste of a coagulant, bittern, for tofu. "Our manufacturing method enables the pure flavor of tofu to be brought out" (according to Tomoyuki Fujii, professor at Tohoku University).

In short, this food ingredient, rich in the natural flavor of soybean, has become available for sweets, baked sweets, and bread. This product is available online. The price of this product is 1,000 yen (tax included)/pack (500 g).