Blending of cashew apple juice with fruit juices and spices for improving nutritional quality and palatability

Abstract

Cashew nut is a tropical fruit rich in vitamins and minerals. Although cashew apple juice is sweet and nutritious but it has astringency, which makes it less palatable. However, its nutritional quality and palatability could be boosted substantially by using juices of other fruits. Hence, a study was conducted by blending cashew apple juice with other fruit juices (lime, pineapple, passion fruit, papaya and gooseberry) and spices for the preparation of RTS beverage and squash. The organoleptic scoring of RTS beverage and squash revealed that sample prepared with cashew apple juice and pineapple juice in equal proportion along with ginger drops, followed by cashew apple juice blended with pineapple juice alone was found to have better acceptability. The blending of cashew apple juice with equal quantity of passion fruit juice along with or without ginger drops also found to be better. Such RTS drink showed maximum flavour, taste (acidity 0.66%), sweetness (sugar 15%) and better appearance and colour. The squash prepared with cashew apple juice, pineapple juice and ginger had the minimum acidity (0.24%) and high sugar content (29.77%) with a vitamin C content of 84.2 mg/ 100 g.