Physicochemical, nutritional and organoleptic characteristics of cookies based on water chestnut (Trapa natans) and wheat

The water chestnut flour has massive potential to replace the white flour for the development of value-added food products. In the present research work water chestnut flour was combined with white flour at different levels, i.e. 0 (T0), 15 (T1), 30 (T2), 45 (T3) and 60% (T4), to develop nutritional cookies. The influence of the water chestnut flour concentration on the obtained cookie's physiochemical features was investigated. The cookie's diameter and thickness exhibited a significant increase as a result of the replacement. The fiber and ash contents progressively increased from 2.8±0.1% and 1.3±0.1% in the case of T0, to 6.1±0.1% and 2.2±0.1% for T4, respectively. Meanwhile, the moisture, protein and fat contents of cookies decreased. A significant increase in K, Mg, Zn, Fe, P and Cu was observed with values 98.3±0.1, 21.5±0.2, 2.0±0.2, 3.0±0.2, 48.6±0.4 and 2.3±0.02 mg/100 g, respectively in T4 cookies. The organoleptic analysis showed that control cookies got the highest scores for all these parameters, whereas cookies with 60% water chestnut flour got the lowest scores. For T1 and T2 formulations, acceptable scores were collected, justifying that a 15 to 30% replacement level of water chestnut flour with white flour could be proposed to develop good quality nutritious cookies.