Formulation and Assessment of Nutritional Functional and Sensory Attributes of Complementary Foods from Maize-Carrot-Pigeon Pea Flour Blends

Abstract

Nutritive, less bulk and low cost complementary flour blends were produced from maize, carrot and pigeon pea. Five different blends of flour were formulated from maize, carrot and pigeon pea in the ratio of 100:0:0 (A), 90:5:5 (B), 85:5:10 (C), 80:5:15 (D) and 75:5:20 (E) while commercial formula (sample F) served as control. The formulated complementary flour blends were analyzed for their functional properties, proximate, selected mineral and vitamin compositions while the reconstituted samples (gruel) were evaluated for sensory attributes. The functional properties of the complementary flour blends showed less bulk density (0.72-0.76 g/ml) below the commercial formula (1.26 g/ml), low water and oil absorption capacity as well as swelling index. The proximate composition showed significant (p<0.05) increase and ranged from 4.08-4.91% moisture, 6.15-9.48% crude protein, 1.33-1.48% ash, 1.98-2.71% crude fibre, 3.07-4.15% lipid, and 82.93-86.72% carbohydrate. Vitamins A and C were also increased significantly as the levels of substitution increased from 1.80-2.14 µ/100g and 3.21-4.42 µ/100g, respectively. The sensory scores showed that sample A was most preferred followed by sample B in terms of general acceptability.

Quality Attributes of Wheat-Tigernut Flour Blends and Chin-Chin Produced From the Blends

“…The results obtained suggest that wheat-tigernut flour blends would be useful in food systems such as bakery products. The OAC was in line with Bello et al (2020) who reported OAC of 1.25-1.9 g/g for different ratios of complementary foods from maize, carrot and pigeon pea. WAC and OAC indicates enhanced hydrophobic character of proteins in flour (Kalar et al, 2022).…”