Sensory and Colour Profile of Milk-coconut Sweet as a Function of Ingredients using Response Surface Methodology

Abstract

Milk-coconut sweet is a traditional Indian sweetmeat that is popular in eastern and southern India. Due to absence of standardized procedure of production it is still confined to small scale sweet makers. Hence the present study was aimed at optimizing the production process for manufacturing milk-coconut sweet with desirable organoleptic and colour characteristics. The level of milk with 35% total solids, flakes of fresh mature coconut kernel and ground sugar were optimized using five level and three factor Central Composite Rotatable Design (CCRD) of Response Surface Methodology (RSM) approach.The relevant quadratic regression models for various responses revealed that all the sensorial and colour attributes could be accurately predicted by these three factors. Among the ingredients, sugar played major role in significantly influencing the sensory and colour profile, followed by coconut and milk, respectively. On the basis of sensorial and colour attributes of milk-coconut sweet as obtained through the use of different combinations of ingredients, an optimized set of combination i.e., 49.55% milk, 30.24% coconut and 20.26% sugar was obtained with a desirability of 0.83. The predicted values for sensorial attributes of optimized product were 7.82, 8.52, 8.51, 7.98 and 8.21 for colour and appearance, body and texture, flavour, sweetness and overall acceptability, respectively and lightness (L*), redness (a*) and yellowness (b*) were 65.94, 2.47 and 23.15, respectively. Triplicate samples were prepared using the optimized solution and were evaluated for sensory, colour and textural attributes. There were non significant (p>0.05) difference between actual values and predicted values.