Abstract
Cooking-induced conversion of starch, the major carbohydrate in pulses, is crucial for the digestibility of the seed. The gelatinization-melting transition of lentil, bean and chickpea starches was studied using Differential Scanning Calorimetry at different temperatures (T values ranged from 20 to 160 ◦C) and water contents (X from 0.2 to 3 kg kg 1 db). Gelatinization and melting endotherms were successfully modeled as two desummed Gaussian functions. This modeling enabled to generate the degree of starch conversion for any T and X conditions, a valuable indicator that could be used in predictive cooking models. As previously reported for melting, the temperature of gelatinization was found to depend on moisture in a way that can be modeledusing the FloryHuggins equation. The results suggest that starch undergoes melting transition irrespective of water content. The similar starch conversion diagram for the three pulses suggest that starches have similar thermal behavior.