The feasibility of producing dessert containing grape juice concentrate, and evaluation of its physicochemical, microbial and sensory properties

Introduction: Milk-based dessert is one of the dairy products which in addition to the nutritional value, makes a variety in the consumer basket of goods. The most important property of desserts is their high energy and a pleasant feeling that is created by the consumer due to its ingredients. These products contain mainly milk, thickeners, sugar, flavoring compounds and colorant, and have a jelly structure. Sugar is used as a sweetener in the production of desserts. The grape juice concentrate is one of the traditional products of Iran's grapevine region, which accounts for about 5 to 20 percent of Iranian grapes used to make grape juice concentrate. Grape juice concentrate contains high levels of natural sugars, minerals, vitamins, organic acids and antioxidants. Therefore, grape juice concentrate can be used as a sugar replacer sweetener. Materials and Methods: In order to reduce the amount of sucrose in dessert and its replacement with grape juice concentrate, different ratio of grape juice concentrate (0, 5, 7.5 and 10%) were used. To prepare dessert samples, wheat starch was first added to milk at 4%w/w, and then 0.5%w/w gelatin and sugar were added and mixed until all ingredients were completely dissolved in the milk. Then, it was heated to 95°C and stirred at 270 rpm for 15 minutes, then cooled to 40 °C, and grape juice concentrate and water were added. The mixture was finally filled into the dishes. Samples were subjected to physicochemical, microbial and sensory evaluation after 48 hours of storage at 4 °Ċ. The AOAC (2000) methods were used for measuring the moisture content and fat. The amount of carbohydrate, acidity, and pH were calculated based on method of Ebrahimi et al (2018). To measure the free radicals inhibition by DPPH, method Kamkar (2009) was followed. The color analysis was performed based on the method of Hosseini et al (2019). The parameters of color include L* (lightness), a* (redness) and b* (yellowness) were measured. Texture parameters include hardness (N), cohesiveness, springiness (cm), gumminess (N), chewiness (N.cm), adhesiveness were determined by texture analyzer as described by AOAC (2000). The sensory attributes were evaluated by 15 panelists. A five-point hedonic scale rating (1= very bad, 2=bad, 3= neither bad nor good, 4= good, 5= very good) was carried out. Data analyzed with SPSS software and means were compared with Duncan multiple range test. Results and discussion: The results showed that the increase in the amount of grape juice concentrate in dessert samples caused a significant (p< 0.05) increase in acidity, hardness, total solid, a*, and b* value, and percentage antioxidant activity and a significant (p<0.05) decrease in fat, sucrose, pH and L* index. Grape juice concentrate has no significant (p˃0.05) effect on the texture indexes, total count, mold and yeast. The results of microbial tests showed that the total bacterial count increased in samples of grape juice compared to control (p <0.05) but mold and yeast counts were not significantly different in dessert dairy samples (p˃0.05). It should be noted that the microbial count of the samples is in accordance with the standard dairy dessert No. 14725. Sensory evaluation indicated that the addition of grape juice concentrate in the dessert samples did not have any significant effect on the textural characteristics but increased the score of other sensory factors. The sample containing 10% of grape concentrate juice obtained the highest score in odor, sweetness, color, and acceptance, and since its other characteristics were standard, it was selected as the best treatment.