Plant-based foods are increasingly in demand around the world, both for their positive effects on human health and contributions to environmental sustainability (Yazici, Taspinar, & Ozer, 2022). As well as the vegan and vegetarian population, normal consumers, now tend to prefer plant-based food and ingredients that are environmentally friendly and healthy (He et al., 2021). Also, the increasing human population and rapid consumption of natural food resources (Aschemann-Witzel, Gantriis, Fraga, & Perez-Cueto, 2021) create a need for low-cost and recyclable food alternatives, especially as an alternative to animal foods.

Legumes are plant foods that stand out as cheap and sustainable alternatives to animal foods (Maphosa & Jideani, 2017), and have positive effects on human health and environmental sustainability (Yanni, Iakovidi, Vasilikopoulou, & Karathanos, 2023). Although there may be differences depending on the type, in general, legumes belonging to Fabacae or Leguminosae botanical family, are valuable foodstuffs in terms of nutrition with their carbohydrate (average 60 %), protein (average 20–45 %), dietary fiber (average 5–37 %) (Maphosa & Jideani, 2017), vitamin B, minerals such as zinc, iron, potassium and magnesium (Hughes, Pearson, & Grafenauer, 2022), and bioactive compounds (Singh, Singh, Kaur, & Singh, 2017). Common types of legumes produced in the world contain chickpeas, soybeans, dry peas, dry beans, lentils and peanuts (Semba, Ramsing, Rahman, Kraemer, & Bloem, 2021).

Aquafaba, which has become very popular recently, is a plant-based viscous liquid that is left over and discarded after cooking the legumes (Echeverria-Jaramillo & Shin, 2023a). He, Purdy, et al. (2021) stated the following chronologically regarding the history of aquafaba: Aquafaba, which takes its name from the Latin words aqua, meaning water, and faba, meaning bean, was described as a foaming agent by Joël Roessel, a French vegan, at first in 2014 (Révolution Végétale, 2014). After his use the aquafaba instead of egg white as a foaming agent in the floating island formulation, an eggless chocolate mousse was made with the foam obtained from chickpea aquafaba. In the same periods, an eggless meringue formulation forming only concentrated chickpea aquafaba and sugar was developed by Goose Wohlt, and then cooking water of legumes was named as aquafaba in 2015 (Aquafaba History, 2016). Since this recent date, it has become very popular, especially with chefs and vegan communities, and led the food industry to develop clean rheological additives based on aquafaba. In this study, aquafaba production, composition, functional properties, use in foods, methods used to improve its functionality and powderization techniques have been examined.