Sensory and rapid instrumental methods as a combined tool for quality control of cooked ham

Abstract

In this preliminary investigation, different commercial categories of Italian cooked pork hams have been characterized using an integrated approach based on both sensory and fast instrumental measurements. For these purposes, Italian products belonging to different categories (cooked ham, “selected” cooked ham and “high quality” cooked ham) were evaluated by sensory descriptive analysis and by the application of rapid tools such as image analysis by an “electronic eye” and texture analyzer. The panel of trained assessors identified and evaluated 10 sensory descriptors able to define the quality of the products. Statistical analysis highlighted that sensory characteristics related to appearance and texture were the most significant in discriminating samples belonged to the highest (high quality cooked hams) and the lowest (cooked hams) quality of the product whereas the selected cooked hams, showed intermediate characteristics. In particular, high quality samples were characterized, above all, by the highest intensity of pink intensity, typical appearance and cohesiveness, and, at the same time, by the lowest intensity of juiciness; standard cooked ham samples showed the lowest intensity of all visual attributes and the highest value of juiciness, whereas the intermediate category (selected cooked ham) was not discriminated from the other. Also physical-rheological parameters measured by electronic eye and texture analyzer were effective in classifying samples. In particular, the PLS model built with data obtained from the electronic eye showed a satisfactory performance in terms of prediction of the pink intensity and presence of fat attributes evaluated during the sensory visual phase.This study can be considered a first application of this combined approach that could represent a suitable and fast method to verify if the meat product purchased by consumer match its description in terms of compliance with the claimed quality.

Evaluation of the secondary structure and digestibility of myofibrillar proteins in cooked ham

“…In the present study, cooking with different temperatures showed that odor and taste were more significant in describing drycured ham than color, texture, and juiciness. These results were not in line with previous studies presented in literature which found that the largest difference between cooked samples with respect to color and texture was caused by the cooking temperature (Barbieri et al, 2016). The difference could be explained by the fact that Jinhua ham owned an outstanding flavor parameter (Huan et al, 2005).…”

Near‐infrared spectroscopy‐based analysis to study sensory parameters on pork loins as affected by cooking methods and conditions

“…These findings point out the accuracy of both NIRS and data mining techniques for prediction of sensory attributes of cooked loins. This is in agreement with previous studies applying NIRS to cooked ham and lamb meat and using partial least square and partial least square regression. Besides that, some have proposed the use of NIRS to predict physicochemical parameters in pork meat products …”

“…In addition, Alamprese and Casiraghi allowed the authentication of fish fillets by means of NIRS. There also are some studies focused on analysing quality characteristics of cooked meat by using NIRS …”

Liking Product Landscape: Going Deeper into Understanding Consumers’ Hedonic Evaluations

“…Principal component analysis (PCA) is an orthogonal projection of the data onto a lower-dimensional space such that the variance of the projected data is maximized [52,53]. This method has been widely used in sensory analysis [54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61]. Furthermore, it is a core component of the internal and external preference mappings.…”