Welcome to the MedLibrary.org Wikipedia Supplement on Extract -- Please Click to Return to Front Page

This article or section needs to be updated. Please update the article to reflect recent events / newly available information, and remove this template when finished.

This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (June 2008)

This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. Please help recruit one or improve this article yourself. See the talk page for details. Please consider using {{Expert-subject}} to associate this request with a WikiProject

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 edition of The Grocer's Encyclopedia.

An extract is a substance made by extracting a part of a raw material, often by using a solvent such as ethanol or water. Extracts may be sold as tinctures or in powder form.

The aromatic principles of many spices, nuts, herbs, fruits, etc., and some flowers, are marketed as extracts, among the best known of true extracts being almond, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, lemon, nutmeg, orange, peppermint, pistachio, rose, spearmint, vanilla, violet, and wintergreen.

Extraction techniques

The majority of natural essences are obtained by extracting the essential oil from the blossoms, fruit, roots, etc., or the whole plants, through four techniques:

• Expression when the oil is very plentiful and easily obtained, as in lemon peel.
• Absorption is generally accomplished by steeping in alcohol, as vanilla beans.
• Maceration is used to create smaller bits of the whole, as in making peppermint extract, etc.
• Distillation is used with maceration, but in many cases, it requires expert chemical knowledge and the erection of costly stills.

The distinctive flavors of nearly all fruits, in the popular acceptance of the word, are very desirable adjuncts to many food preparations, but there are only a few from which it is practicable to obtain a concentrated flavor extract of the necessary strength. Among those which lend themselves readily to the manufacture of "pure" extracts the most important are lemons, oranges and vanilla beans.

Chemical-created essence

A majority of other, concentrated fruit flavors, such as banana, cherry, currant, peach, pineapple, raspberry and strawberry, are produced by combinations of various esters, together with special oils. The desired colors are generally obtained by the use of dyes. Among the esters most generally employed are ethyl acetate and ethyl butyrate. The chief factors in the production of artificial banana and pineapple extract, and also important in the manufacture of strawberry extract, are amyl acetate and amyl butyrate, amyl alcohol being the principal constituent of that part of the alcohol obtained by the distillation of grain and potato starch, which is popularly known in the US as fusel oil and in Europe, generally by the title of potato oil.

Artificial extracts do not, as a rule, possess the delicacy of the fruit flavor, but they get sufficiently close to it to be of real service and convenience when true essences are unobtainable or considered to be too expensive.

References

Wikipedia content modification information:

• This page was last modified on 9 July 2008, at 14:56.

Wikipedia Authorship and Review

Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.

Wikipedia Usage Guidelines

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Extract".

The URL for this specific entry is:

• http://medlibrary.org/medwiki/Extract

All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.