Investigation on the Color and Surface Changes Kinetics of Coated Eggplant Slices with Basil Seed Mucilage During Frying process

Application of edible mucilages is one of the best ways to improve appearance properties of fried foods. The aim of this study was to investigate the changes in color parameters including lightness, redness, yellowness, color changes and the area of eggplant slices coated with different concentrations of basil seed mucilage during deep fat frying. In this study, eggplant slices were placed in the fryer and the effects of frying temperature at three levels of 150, 175 and 200 °C on the appearance characteristics of the samples were investigated every minute (up to 12 minutes). Also, for modeling the color change index, the Power, Quadratic, Gompertz, Logistic, Richards, MMF, and Weibull models were used. The lightness index calculated for the frying process of eggplant samples showed that the coated samples with basil seed mucilage are brighter. With increasing the concentration of basil seed mucilage from 0 to 1.5%, the redness index of the samples increased from 7.96 to 11.25. The coated samples were significantly yellower (P<0.05) but there was no significant difference between the 1% and 1.5% mucilage concentrations. The mean color change index values for the control sample, 0.5%, 1% and 1.5% of basil seed mucilage were 43.71, 41.25, 42.64 and 40.88, respectively. For modeling the color change index, the MMF model had lower error compared to the other models. The average area changes calculated for the control sample, 0.5%, 1% and 1.5% of basil seed mucilage were 49.41, 43.68, 42.41 and 36.66, respectively. The results showed that coating of eggplant slices with basil seed mucilage preserves the appearance of the fried product and the lowest area changes during frying were observed in the coating treatment with 1.5% mucilage.