The vegan nougat: alternative solutions for a plant-based sweet.

Nowadays, consumers are asking for low-calorie, sustainable, and plant-based products and industries must face these requirements. Nougat is an old confectionery product, with a hard or soft texture obtained from a mixture of cooked sugar syrup and nuts due to its ingredients, the nougat has many features that can improve, in terms of sustainability. The thesis aimed to investigate the possibility to create a new healthier and plant-based nougat. Starting from the traditional receipt, the main ingredients have been investigated, focusing on the sugar and the egg white substitution. Sugar and honey, affect the consumer’s health and honey and egg white cannot be considered in plant-based products. In addition, egg white - during the nougat process – is fundamental from a technological point of view because it is used as a foaming agent that makes the nougat enough soft to not crumble and enough thick to not be liquid. The foaming ability is the capacity of dough, in this case, made of sugar honey and egg white, to collect air bubbles and form the typical texture of nougat. However, the egg white has been demonstrated to be unsustainable for poultry production. Regarding the sugar substitution, the most suitable solution is corn syrup which has shown the same changing of density with the temperature as the honey the other one is agave syrups which is one of the most ingredients used for the adulteration of honey because it is composed mainly of fructose and glucose as honey. To face the substitution of the foaming capability of egg white different protein comes from plant-based product have been evaluated. The bibliography research has revealed that the legumes, as soy, could have the same foaming capability as egg white and could, also, stabilize the product. In addition, on the market, the RuBisCo, is present. It is a protein that can be extracted with a very good yield from the leaves of green plants, it has shown good solubility, foaming, emulsifying, and gelling capacity as the egg white. The thesis has shown many solutions, shifting from real to hypothetical. It has proposed solutions and aspects to consider for comparison and analysed the traditional nougat with a new possible one. In the end, the need for further studies was also highlighted for economic reasons and the availability of raw materials.