Rheological properties of sweetened tamarind pulp

Abstract

Tamarind is a fruit that can be used for many purposes, including the manufacture of pulp, which has been employed for various objectives. Although knowledge of the viscoelastic properties is very useful in the design and prediction of the stability of food products, these have not been studied in sweetened tamarind pulp, which presents some problems during storage. Storage modules, loss and flow behavior of tamarind pulp at two sugar concentrations were determined. The elastic or storage modulus is a measure of the hardness of the material. The pulp with higher sugar contents showed a higher apparent viscosity due to the increase of the solid nature of the pulp with the increases in sucrose content, and decrease with increasing percentage of pulp. The elastic modulus was higher than the viscous one, demonstrating strong character, and higher for the pulp with higher sugar content.