An experimental protocol to determine quality parameters of dry-cured loins using low-field Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Emulsified sausages with yeast protein as an animal fat replacer: Effects on nutritional composition, spatial structure, gel performance, and sensory quality

This paper investigated the effect of yeast protein (YP)-fat replacement on the nutritional composition, spatial structure, gel performance, and sensory quality of emulsified sausages. YP is enriched with essential amino acids (36.49 g/100 g), which improved the nutritional quality of sausages whereas reducing its fat content. Moreover, YP could absorb water and fat, thus the YP-added sausages exhibiting an amount-dependent increase in emulsion stability and water migration. The microstructure illustrated that YP acted as a filler to improve structural homogeneity and compactness of the pork gel network. And YP-fat replacement could significantly enhance the hardness, gel strength and elasticity of sausages whereas decreasing the viscosity. Additionally, at partial or full YP-fat replacement (25-100%), the YP-added sausages scored higher in odor and texture, as well as better antioxidant stability than controls. Overall, YP can be employed as a new fat substitute for the preparation of healthy and nutritional sausages, while maintaining the sensory quality.

Can Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Replace a Panel of Tasters in Sensory Analysis of Dry-Cured Bísaro Loin?

This study involved a comprehensive examination of sensory attributes in dry-cured Bísaro loins, including odor, androsterone, scatol, lean color, fat color, hardness, juiciness, chewiness, flavor intensity and flavor persistence. An analysis of 40 samples revealed a wide variation in these attributes, ensuring a robust margin for multivariate calibration purposes. The respective near-infrared (NIR) spectra unveiled distinct peaks associated with significant components, such as proteins, lipids and water. Support vector regression (SVR) models were methodically calibrated for all sensory attributes, with optimal results using multiplicative scattering correction pre-treatment, MinMax normalization and the radial base kernel (non-linear SVR model). This process involved partitioning the data into calibration (67%) and prediction (33%) subsets using the SPXY algorithm. The model parameters were optimized via a hybrid algorithm based on particle swarm optimization (PSO) to effectively minimize the root-mean-square error (RMSECV) derived from five-fold cross-validation and ensure the attainment of optimal model performance and predictive accuracy. The predictive models exhibited acceptable results, characterized by R-squared values close to 1 (0.9616-0.9955) and low RMSE values (0.0400-0.1031). The prediction set's relative standard deviation (RSD) remained under 5%. Comparisons with prior research revealed significant improvements in prediction accuracy, particularly when considering attributes like pig meat aroma, hardness, fat color and flavor intensity. This research underscores the potential of advanced analytical techniques to improve the precision of sensory evaluations in food quality assessment. Such advancements have the potential to benefit both the research community and the meat industry by closely aligning their practices with consumer preferences and expectations.

Dry-cured loin characterization by ultrasound physicochemical and sensory parameters

The aim of this study was to evaluate the ability of ultrasound inspection and quality determinations to characterize two commercial categories of dry-cured pork loin, labelled as green (GL) and red (RL). For this objective, ultrasound inspection was carried out for two different frequencies (500 and 1000 kHz), considering parameters of ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV), frequency components related to the fast Fourier transform (FFT), and variables related to the attenuation. Physicochemical (moisture and fat content, water activity, instrumental color), instrumental texture (TPA) and sensory analyses (QDA) were also carried out. Moreover, quality and ultrasonic parameters were subjected to a correlation analysis (Pearson). Several physicochemical, instrumental texture and sensory parameters allowed to discriminate the dry-cured loin category. Moreover, high significant correlations were found among quality and acoustics parameters. Thus, ultrasound inspection can determine quality parameters indirectly without the limitations of traditional methodologies, postulating as a tool for characterizing dry-cured loin samples of different category with a promising predictive nature. This work has showed new findings for dry-cured meat products that may be of interest to the meat industry.