Clumping of frozen par-fried foods: Lessons from frosting on structured surfaces

In this paper, we review the problem of clumping due to frost formation on frozen vegetables, like par-fried potato products. This problem has been very scarcely investigated in the scientific literature. Yet in the industry it is a significant problem, as evident by the various patents on this topic. Thanks to the enormous, recent growth of scientific literature on frost formation on engineered, structured surfaces, we have drawn a multitude of hypotheses of factors governing the clumping and frost formation of frozen foods, which can also be viewed as a structured surface.