Enhancing the quality of pear candies via jaggery‐based osmotic dehydration: Optimization and analysis

Abstract Pear ( Pyrus pyrifolia ) is a healthy fruit; however, its availability is limited in certain seasons due to short shelf life. To overcome this limitation, a cost‐effective dehydration‐based preservation involving osmotic dehydration process with jaggery as a pretreatment, followed by drying in a cabinet dryer was explored. The Box–Behnken design was used to optimize the key factors: immersion time (hour), temperature (°C), and jaggery concentration (°Brix) which were employed with the aim to maximize water loss (WL) and overall acceptability (OA) while minimizing solute gain (SG) and achieving the ideal hardness in the resulting pear candy with an OA score. After optimization, immersing the pear for 3 h, maintaining the osmotic solution at 45°C, and using a jaggery concentration of 52°Brix resulted in a WL of 40%, with an SG of 9.5%. The hardness of the resulting pear candy was 3.20 N with an OA score of 7.65. Pear slices were processed using the optimized osmotic dehydration conditions, followed by conventional drying with an air convective dryer at 50°C. Further characterized, the jaggery‐osmosed pear candy was compared with traditional sucrose‐based pear candy. Our findings suggest that using jaggery as an osmotic agent improved the candy's mineral profile and improved consumer acceptability, making it a suitable alternative to the standard production method.