Hydrocolloids are widely used in many food formulations to improve quality attributes and shelf-life. The two main uses are as thickening and gelling agents. As thickening agents, they find uses in soups, gravies, salad dressings, sauces and toppings while as gelling agents, they are extensively used in products like jam, jelly, marmalade, restructured foods and low sugar/calorie gels. The role of specific hydrocolloids for thickening and for gel formation is reviewed pinpointing specific applications in food formulations and for product development.

Fruit‐based gels with gellan gum as the gelling agent was prepared. Textural attributes of the gellan gum gels, formed with different concentrations of the gum (0.5–3.0%) and sugar and/or pineapple juice, were determined employing the methods of large‐deformation uniaxial compression and stress relaxation. Fracture stress/energy markedly increases with an increase in the concentration of gellan gum while fracture strain exhibits a marginal effect. The change in these compressive textural parameters is more pronounced for sugar added samples compared with gels without sugar. Marked decay in stress relaxation curves was observed; the extent of relaxation decreases marginally with an increase in gum content up to 2% but shows much lesser values beyond 2% addition. The sugar added samples exhibit lesser relaxation characteristics but higher relaxation times indicating elastic characteristics compared with samples without sugar. Use of gellan gum provides an innovative method for developing fruit juice based gels as a convenience food because of attractive transparent appearance and textural attributes. PRACTICAL APPLICATION The use of hydrocolloids like gellan gum can develop fabricated foods in the form of fruit juice based gels having unique textural properties. These properties can be altered to suit the consumer preference by varying the proportions of gellan gum, fruit juice and sugar. The results in the present investigation arising from compression and relaxation testing thus help in characterizing the developed gels.