Potential applications of near infrared spectroscopy for evaluating thermal treatments of fresh egg pasta

A non-invasive near infrared technique has been used to identify changes in fresh unfilled egg pasta (tagliatelle, fettuccine and tagliolini) during thermal treatment. The treatment of fresh pasta was quantified in terms of time–temperature integrated indices, and F7010 values of each treatment calculated. Heat-treated pasta samples were scanned by reflectance spectroscopy. A calibration set of 67 samples and a validation set of 20 samples of fresh egg pasta was used. The calibration was carried out using the partial least square (PLS) model and combined all wavelengths in a range from 4000 to 10,000 cm−1. The model predicted F7010 values with an SEE of 0.16 and an r of 0.91. An NIR analysis can be used to rapidly monitor thermal processing parameters.