Development and evaluation of ginger-honey shrikhand – a fermented sweet delicacy

Shrikhand is a semi-soft, pleasant sweetish-sour, whole milk fermented product popular in the western parts of the India and is prepared by mixing chakka with sugar, cream and other ingredients. Levels of milk fat content, sugar: honey ratio and ginger juice concentration were optimized using central composite rotatable design of response surface methodology. Optimized formulation of ginger-honey shrikhand contained 3.16% milk fat, 79.61 sugar: honey ratio (i.e. 20.39 % sugar replaced with honey) and 3.79 % ginger juice concentration (on chakka basis) and gave an overall acceptability score of 8.07 ± 0.06 on a9-point hedonic scale. Ginger-honey shrikhand samples packed in polystyrene cups remained acceptable on 30th day of storage at 7 ± 1 °C with overall acceptability score of 7.83 ± 0.06. Responses from 90 consumers indicated wide acceptability of ginger-honey shrikhand among consumers with mean overall liking score of8.25 on 9-point hedonic scale.