Jujube fruits are medicinal food that has been widely used as not only oriental medicinal material, but also food material. It has known for its high content of medicinal and functional components. With few adverse effects caused from overdose on the fruits and wide applications, jujube are extensively used in food such as porridge, rice cake, tea, yakbap, or Korean traditional sweets.
Based on these advantages, this study aims to enhance edible applications of dates as food material to be easy to treat and to store by improving an inefficient process of sifting the pulp of jujube to make traditional food. To this end, this study investigates physical and chemical properties and nutrition on jujube pulp powder, focusing on methods to utilize it to yakbap, yakpyon, and jujube porridge.
According to the analysis on physical and chemical properties, the jujube pulp powder contained 5.4% of moisture, 2.6% of crude ash, 6.6% of crude protein, 0.35% of crude fat, and 4.7% of crude fiber. The water activity remained 0.95% in jujube pulp while 0.24% in jujube pulp powder. In addition, the jujube pulp powder showed 70.4% of total sugar content and 6.3% of reducing sugar content. Vitamin C was estimated 68.5mg/100g in the jujube pulp powder and the jujube pulp contained 6.2g/100g of dietary fiber. Major minerals were found to be K, Mg, and Ca.
Setting jujube pulp powder to a test group and jujube pulp to a control group, the sensory evaluation and acceptance testing were conducted for yakbap, yakpyon, and jujube porridge made of each group. As a result, there was no significant difference in every sensory item tested(p<0.05).
In comparison between the test group and the control group for yakbap, it was found that the test group had relatively a good level of color, flavor, taste and overall acceptance while the control group was well appreciated in texture acceptance. However, appearance was evaluated to be the same. For yakpyon, jujube pulp powder was rated high in all evaluation items. Finally, for jujube porridge, jujube pulp powder had high rates in flavor, appearance, taste, and overall acceptance while jujube pulp was given high rates in color, and texture acceptance.
Considering the results, the powder manufacturing of jujube pulp will enhance not only product quality but also storage and convenience for handling, offering a variety of edible applications of jujube in cooking or food processing.