Multi-functional food structuring ingredients from jellyfish

Jellyfish have gained attention as a potential source of functional and bioactive compounds, yet their potential as a food stabilizer and culinary ingredient remains largely unexplored. This study investigates the emulsifying properties of two different freeze-dried jellyfish biomatrix powders: a “native” biomatrix with the composition of intact jellyfish dry matter, and a “desalted” biomatrix with a reduced salt content. Overall, the study demonstrated that the jellyfish biomatrix indeed can be used as a functional food stabilizer. Rheological and quantitative microscopy analysis were used to assess the emulsifying properties, that were found to be strongly dependent on the presence of salts and pH, with higher stability and mechanical performance achieved at lower salt content and lower pH. Upon storage, the storage modulus of emulsions stabilized by desalted jellyfish biomatrix decreases by 11-38% following droplet coalescence phenomena characterized by a 2-6 % droplet radius increase (radius of droplet size is of order 4 microns). Conversely, for the native jellyfish biomatrix emulsions, although the absolute storage modulus at day 0 varied among the samples, each formulation showed a relative increase of 20-65% in G’ during storage despite the mean oil droplet size only increasing 0-5 % (radius of droplet size of order 10 microns) and the size distributions suggesting Ostwald ripening. The increased elasticity during storage enabled the transformation of the native jellyfish-based emulsions to form an oleogel following water evaporation. The data suggest that stabilization mechanisms involve a complex interplay of electrostatic, steric stabilization, structure formation in continuous phase, and Pickering-like stabilizations effects. The findings highlight the potential of jellyfish as an alternative to traditional food stabilizers and might offer new textures and flavors for culinary innovations, food design, and food technology. • Jellyfish biomatrix can stabilize emulsions, foams, and oleogels. • Jellyfish biomatrix (1-3%) was used as emulsifier (o/w) (7/:3). • Emulsion stabilization is salt- and pH-dependent. • Native salts facilitate jellyfish-based emulsion templated oleogel formation.