Effect of pH and xanthan gum on emulsifying property of ovalbumin stabilized oil-in water emulsions

The poor emulsifying property of Ovalbumin (OVA) greatly restricted the overall development of eggs in the food industries. In this paper, we investigated the effects of different xanthan gum (XG) concentrations and different pH value on OVA-stabilized oil-in-water emulsions. From the results of turbidity, ultraviolet absorption spectra and fluorescence spectra, we could find that OVA and XG had an obvious interaction. With increasing XG concentration (0–0.4%), the particle size of OVA-XG complex-stabilized emulsions gradually decreased and absolute value of zeta potential significantly increased. The storage stability of the emulsions was obviously improved by increasing the amount of XG. The apparent viscosity of complex-stabilized emulsions significantly increased, thereby improving the emulsions stability. In addition, our results confirmed emulsions stability largely depended on the pH value. OVA-XG composite emulsion showed a better stability at pH 5.5. Our findings indicated that XG had the potential as an emulsions stabilizer and could be used in egg white-derived foods.