ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to set forth the techniques of how to solve a recipe or mixture problem in food product design. A mixture problem is mainly concerned with recipe development research, such as formulation modeling and optimization. The food raw materials in a mixture system are dependent on each other. This leads to the fundamental difference of the statistical experimental methodology applied in a food mixture system from that of a food process system. The problem of recipe development actually focuses on the modeling of a mixture system based on some limited experiments. Optimization is certainly one of the most important parts of food recipe design. It supplies specific information about which formulations may provide the expected food product quality. Similar to optimization procedures in a food process system, two basic approaches, numerical and graphical, could be used to perform optimization in a mixture system. Recipe optimizations can also be performed graphically, or more precisely, be described graphically.
