Influence of various parameters on flow behaviour of instantly-leavened cereal-legume batters

In this work, the rheology of two functionally different batters prepared from instant premixes, typically used for preparation of common Indian food, dosa and vada, is investigated. We elucidate the effect of particle size, concentration, shear rate, and temperature on the rheological signatures of the batters. When the particle diameter is increased from 45 to 420 μm, the viscosity of dosa and vada batter decreases substantially by 86.4% and 63.8% respectively, owing to decrease in water absorption capacity. A gradual increase in the viscosity is observed beyond a temperature of 35 °C due to protein denaturation when the batters are heated from 15 to 80 °C. The extent of increase is substantial when the batters attain a temperature of 70 °C as a result of starch gelatinization. The temperature dependence (40 °C to 80 °C) of viscosity is found to be more pronounced for dosa batter compared to vada batter and found to follow Arrhenius equation. The activation energy for the flow of dosa batter, which swells at a rate twice that of vada, is found to be higher approximately by 2 times. The study presented can be crucial for the design and scale-up of cereal based food processing systems.

The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s13197-025-06307-x.