Abstract:

Cactus and cucumber were used as the raw materials to develop a compound beverage through exploring the color retention of cactus juice, optimal formula, stability and product quality of compound cactus-cucumber juice drink. Orthogonal experiments were used to investigate the optimal formula of compound cactus-cucumber beverage. Results indicated that the optimal formula were 15% cactus juice, 15% cucumber juice and 9% sugar. Better color retention effect of cactus juice was observed under the conditions of 0.6 g/L vitamin C, 0.02 g/L Na2SO3, blanching time of 3 min and color protection time of 0.5 h. The optimal compound stabilizers were 0.1% CMC-Na and 0.01% carrageenan.

Key words: Milpa Alta cactus, cucumber, compound beverage, preparation processing