Structured emulsions as butter substitutes: effects on physicochemical and sensory attributes of shortbread cookies

Background: Reformulation of foods products to reduce total and saturated fats maintaining acceptable structure, texture, and mouthfeel, poses an important challenge to food industry. In this work, the use of structured emulsions (fibre induced oil-in-water biphasic systems with reduced total and saturated fats) is proposed to replace butter in shortbread cookies. Results: Use of structured emulsions resulted in softer dough that was anyway workable using a traditional process. Shortbread cookies containing structured emulsions were harder and paler than the butter control but had a significantly reduced saturated fats content. They also received promising scores in the sensory analysis, in terms of texture and overall acceptability, despite the butter product being still the preferred sample. Conclusion: The results of this study indicated that structured emulsions represent a good solution to produce nutritionally improved short-breads. Optimization of structured emulsion formulation can provide further improvement of shortbread cookies nutritional, sensory and physico-chemical properties.