Sensory evaluation of Gurmar based Mathri developed by different cooking methods

Gymnema (Gymnema sylvestre) contains phytoconstituents as well as anti-diabetic agents such as polypeptide (gurmarin) and triterpene saponins (gymnemic acids and gymnemasaponins) which are responsible to treat diabetic patients. Various types of medicinal herbs have been used in Indian kitchens to make traditional snack foods. Mathri is one of them. In this study, traditional mathri has been formulated by using different levels of the gurmar (5%, 10% and 15%) to enhance their nutritional values. The main objectives of this study were (1) to develop the mathri by incorporating different levels of gurmar through baking and frying cooking methods (2) to optimize the gurmar-based mathri by sensory evaluation using 9-point Hedonic scale method, (3) to compare the cooking methods based on score value of overall acceptability. The observations found that different levels of gurmar used in fried mathri showed significant results on all sensory attributes while nonsignificant results showed for colour, appearance, texture, and crispness in baked mathri. Samples contained 5% gurmar based baked and fried mathri were highly acceptable and were optimized. The results also revealed that, the average value of overall acceptability by baking method was 6.65 while by frying method it was 7.225. It can be concluded that gurmar-based snacks can be adopted as good choice for diabetics.